


What Might Have Been

by Sophie_Of_Tarth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post - A Dance With Dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:34:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2210736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophie_Of_Tarth/pseuds/Sophie_Of_Tarth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Brienne of Tarth sought out Jaime Lannister on Lady Stoneheart’s behalf, had she really thought about how both of them might have changed during their time apart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What might have been

**Author's Note:**

> Having so enjoyed all the wonderful fiction and artwork that surround the Jaime/Brienne fandom this summer, I thought the only way I could really say thank you was to contribute something of my own.  
> It’s a looooong time since I have written any stories and the first time I have written any for this lovely pair, so any mistakes are mine. All characters owned by GRRM.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Brienne of Tarth sought out Jaime Lannister on Lady Stoneheart’s behalf, had she really thought about how both of them might have changed during their time apart?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having so enjoyed all the wonderful fiction and artwork that surround the Jaime/Brienne fandom this summer, I thought the only way I could really say thank you was to contribute something of my own.  
> It’s a looooong time since I have written any stories and the first time I have written any for this lovely pair, so any mistakes are mine. All characters owned by GRRM.

 

They were in the middle of a fight before Brienne could honestly say she had even realised it had begun.

Brienne had been about to tell him. She simply could not stand the guilt and shame any more. Her mouth as dry as sandpaper, the expression on Jaime’s face had been expectant as she had licked her lips and opened her mouth to explain about the trap, Stoneheart, and the lies she had told to get him away from the Lannister camp on his own.

Instead a party of over 20 men at arms had come crashing through the undergrowth as the two of them had paused in their walk towards the Brother’s hideout. An elite killing force ploughing through the muddy slurry, armed with flaming torches and an element of surprise that was sufficient to bring the outlaws out into the open to fight.

_Did they track Jaime and me all the way from Pennytree?_

The fighting had been surprisingly brief.

Jaime’s men were both effective and deadly. Particularly towards those of the Brotherhood without Banners who had attempted to fight back. The caves were stormed; the bulk of the fighting taking place in the kind of mud and sleeting rain only the Riverlands could deliver as the seasons moved into winter.

Brienne had slipped and skidded her way into the fray, intent on finding Pod and maybe even Hunt if she could. In the failing daylight it was almost impossible to tell friend from foe, although when a vengeful Lem lurched in front of her, his sword raised, Brienne had been forced to raise her own weapon and endeavour to dispatch him as quickly as possible.

It was exhausting work, excrutiating with her still injured arm and it took her far longer to incapacitate the big man than she could ever have expected, taking a wound to her thigh as she battled him in the final moments. She turned, hand pressed to her wounded leg, only to see Stoneheart, dagger drawn advancing on Ser Jaime Lannister from behind.

Brienne didn’t think.

Not about the sworn oath.

Not about the breaking of it.

Brienne simply acted, lunging forwards cutting Stoneheart dead in her tracks, the sword Oathkeeper slicing through the rags and air of the woman’s body like a knife through butter.

Jaime had not even noticed. He fought on with his back to her, his left hand now as capable as any she had seen as he pushed his opponent into a slithering, stumbling retreat. But watching Jaime meant Brienne did not see the Lannister soldier who misinterpreted her proximity to the Kingslayer, her sword drawn, her clothing showing no distinguishing Lannister colours, as a threat worthy of being knocked unconscious to the floor with the butt of a sword.

 

So it was that Brienne regained her senses some time later, slumped on her side in the mud trying to get some small idea of what was going on round her.

The first person she recognised was Jaime, bloody and muddied, his rain soaked cloak stuck to his armour, the hem steeped in muck as he stood over the body of Stoneheart. He was deep in conversation with one of the men at arms until Pod stumbled across the clearing escorted by yet another soldier, limping as he went. Ser Jaime looked him up and down and put his hand on the squire’s shoulder as he spoke to the boy, his expression grim, his gaze intent on Pod as Pod bowed his head in obvious deference to the man so many still referred to as ‘Kingslayer’.

Of Hyle Hunt there was no sign.

The Lannister men were clearly an organised and disciplined force as they worked to secure prisoners and pull the dead out of the mud, piling them on one side close to where Brienne lay.

_Did they mistake me for one claimed by the Stranger?_ The thought occurred to Brienne even as Jaime raised his voice to urgently direct men further into the caves. Ser Jaime Lannister was clearly in charge, deferred to, obeyed.

She’d never seen him in charge of such a force. It made him seem far more aloof, untouchable. So far out of her reach she could only look, and look, and look. Damn him.

Brienne moved her head only to feel it spin madly once more, mud seeping onto the only clear patch of hair left on her scalp. She lay on her back and stared at the sky.

_I was the one who led him directly into a trap_ , she thought, _he’ll never forgive me._

Her matted hair dripped slurry and filth, unfamiliar tears cut warm tracks through the muck on her cheek, the salt water trickling into the raw flesh of her face.

“God’s my face hurts,” she winced.

“Get up,” A rough voice told her, a boot nudging her side, obviously mistaking her mud plastered body as that of a brother rather than a sister. “Or you’ll be thrown in with the dead.”

Her head hurt, her ribs hurt, her arm was numb, the wound on her leg from Lem’s blade hurt like the blazes and now the scab on her cheek had decided to throb in harmony. Brienne struggled up onto her elbows and dragged herself to lean against a tree.

I’ll feel better in a moment, Brienne assured herself as the world faded to black once more.

She came too with a yelp of pain as a hand seized a fistful of hair and pulled her head up from where it had lolled against her chest. A flaming torch was thrust in her face, so close she could feel the heat sear her cold cheeks.

“At bloody last,” a familiar voice drawled from somewhere in the darkness. “I had wondered if you had abandoned me to my fate, my lady.”

 “Jaime,” she mumbled, rubbing her face with a muddy sleeve in an effort to revive herself. “I was hit on the head.”

“Are you fit to move?” Jaime’s voice was curt, “Can you walk?”

“Of course I can walk,” she grumbled as she lurched to her feet, before crashing back to her knees.

“So I see,” the simple observation dripped with sarcasm, “Could you be covered in any more mud? It manages to completely obscure even your tow-headed charms.”

“Not helping,” Brienne took a deep breath and went to get to her feet, only to find herself ably assisted by an armoured elbow beneath her shoulder hauling her safely up.

“Back to work you lot,” bawled a voice loud enough to make her wince. Brienne could hear the sound of soldiers restarting tasks about her. “Ser Jaime’s found what he was looking for.”

Brienne was taken aback by the sheer strength of this Jaime. This was not the weakened prisoner she had escorted through the Riverlands, and fought, what seemed like a lifetime ago. This was more like the battle hardened knight who was so feared he had been kept tied to a tree even when he had had his sword hand cut from his body.

She swayed slightly and stared into his face. His distinctive fair hair had grown and his beard was once more in evidence. Ser Jaime Lannister looked less Kings Landing and more Kingsroad once more.

“I owe you an…”

“Not here.”

“But I’m…”

“Not here,” Jaime growled at her, “Gods woman, are you suddenly as deaf as you are filthy?”

“I am trying to…”

“On that we must agree. Trying.”

Jaime hauled her forward, serving as her sole support as she staggered along next to him. He was as strong and as steady as a rock.

A path cleared before them as men hurried out of their way, two horses swiftly led forward.

“Are you able to ride? We need to return to camp and you need a maester.”

“Of course I can,” she told him as he studied her briefly and then turned his attention to the two mounts before them. The doubtful expression on his handsome face was obvious.

“Upon reflection, maybe you had better ride with me.”

Brienne stopped suddenly, an image of Jaime returning to camp with her sat before him like some frail maiden making her rear back suddenly. The comment it would cause suddenly becoming all too obvious.

“I can ride a horse Ser Jaime.”

“I know that,” his exasperated tone was accompanied by a reassuringly warm touch on her arm after he had stripped the gauntlets from both gold and normal hands. “But can you stay mounted on the creature for ten miles or more?”

“I… I don’t know.” She was incurably honest.

He snorted, “Enough said.”

 

The compromise was that she ride behind him, not in front, her cheek resting on his cloak, the bone slightly sore against the metal plate of his armour.

“Has that wound been looked at?” he asked.

“Which one?” she replied vaguely.

He sighed, “The cheek. There are others?”

“Leg, I think…”

“Is that the wound I can see bleeding even now?” Brienne felt him shift in the saddle to look down at the offending limb.

“It was cut as I fought,” she murmured into his cloak, her arms linked about him as they swayed in time to their mount’s ambling walk. Jaime seemed in no rush to return to camp and the slow pace suited her still dizzy state. It was rather like embracing a shapely metal statue except he was warm… really warm.

So warm it was entirely possible that she nodded off slumped against his back, but she awoke quickly enough as shouting started about her.

“The Kingslayer is back!”

The horse jibbed and Brienne felt herself lurch to one side, on the point of slipping except a strong left hand caught her firmly under the arm and lowered her safely to the ground.

She staggered slightly on gaining her feet, the hand only releasing her when she was upright.

“Escort our guest to my tent,” Jaime’s voice drawled from above her head as he turned the horse around. “Tell Lew to get some water heated for a bath.”

“No, I don’t think…” Brienne started to protest.

“And call the maester,” Jaime slid from the horse.

Guilt assailed her. The maester would be busy enough tending far more serious wounds than a nick to a thigh and a knock to the head.

“Ser Jaime, I do not need a maester,” she insisted loudly, “please do not inconvenience-“

The look he gave her made her flush bright red and instantly decide to argue with him somewhere less public. His gaze dropped to her wounded leg where the muddy material was clearly stained with fresh blood.

“Take her to the tent.”

And that was that.

 

Brienne found herself deposited into a large red pavilion and then left alone, although two guards had been stationed outside.

Were they to keep others out, she wondered, or to keep her in?

A tub was brought and dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the tent, next to the brazier, followed by a procession of buckets and cross looking manservants.

“My…l…Lady,” it was nothing more than a girl, but Gods, her teeth. So broken and misshapen it was a shock. The girl noticed her stare and covered them with her hand as she spoke, “can I help you to disrobe?”

“No!” Taking a deep breath she lowered her voice, “no, no thank you.”

When the tub was full, she was left to strip the mud caked gambeson and linens from her body. Everything had started to dry in the heat of the Lannister pavilion and although she delayed as long as she could, the water proved too tempting. Removing her clothes was more like trying to climb from the covers of a book than to discard fabric.

But the water… the water was wonderful.

_When was the last time I had a bath?_

Gingerly Brienne stepped into the tub, her toes searching the wooden base for a secure foothold. The hot liquid swirled around her thighs and as she sat, it swamped her cuts and wounds.

“Gods!” they hurt.

The cut on her thigh was the worst, but she had nicks and scratches over her hands and wrist as well as her neck and face. As if not wanting to be left out, the wound on her cheek set to throbbing angrily in time to her heartbeat.

“May the mother save me,” she groaned as she finally immersed all of her body save her head into the bath. Leaning back, she let her head rest on the edge and allowed her eyes to drift shut.

“If you faint I’ll pull you out, I’m sure you don’t want to be the first Tarth to die in a bathtub.” Jaime’s voice rang out before saying to someone else as an aside, “Leave us.”

Brienne opened her eyes wide to see an intrigued maester and an amused Jaime Lannister regarding her from the entrance to the tent.

Sitting bolt upright, the water lurching to the sides of the tub, she crossed her hands in front of her breasts.

A flash of pity appeared in the maester’s eyes and she felt a glower descend onto her face. She knew her chest was rather more muscle than soft bosom, she knew that her face had never been comely to start with, but to cover her homely freckled features with dirt and blood and to then put her broad pale _freakish_ shoulders on display was unfair.

“I am having a bath,” was all she finally managed to splutter, the indignity of being in such a position making a tide of red sweep up from her meagre breasts to encompass her neck and face.

The maester bowed and left, having murmured briefly in Jaime’s ear.

Pushing her chin up, Brienne stared hard at him, waiting for him to also leave.

He did not.

Instead he picked up a stool, placed it next to the tub and sat, laying his good arm and hand on the edge as he regarded her with a wry smile.

She flushed again and moved as far away from him as the tub would allow.

“You do know that my horse still tells a better lie than you do,” Jaime studied her damaged cheek before she covered it self-consciously with her hand, “but by the seven it was always going to be more entertaining than negotiations in the Riverlands.”

Brienne closed her eyes briefly before opening them only to encounter such a knowing green gaze that it was clear that he had seen through her lies from the start.

“I… she…,” where to start?

What on earth could she say to him?

Brienne drew a deep breath and realised she had only thought as far as confronting the Brother’s again. She had not considered surviving long enough to have to deal with consequences of her actions.

“A bare faced lie,” Jaime drawled, eyebrows raised, “The Hound has poor Sansa hidden away?  And if he did, it seems far from unlikely that the Hound would not find a pack of his own in this godforsaken place. So what could have brought you to me with a lie on your lips and desperation in your eyes?” He raised his brows, “A trap?”

Brienne stared at the dirty tub water.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she admitted finally, “I was going to tell you…but …”

He could have said no, he could have said she was not worth the risk. He could have turned round and gone back to the Lannister column at Pennytree and left her.

_But he did not._

“When were you going to tell me? As we stood before Stoneheart, or maybe as we were about to be made guests of her hanging tree?”

“I realised… as we walked to… and I was going to have to tell you…” She normally managed to be far more articulate and calm but now the words were sticking to her tongue and she found that, confronted with more emotion than she could possibly want, she had no idea how to put right what she had done. This was Jaime and she was losing him.

 

“No,” she shook her head, “I couldn’t do it. I didn’t even think that you’d come with me. Why would you?”

“Why would I not?” his voice was soft, “And it was you that killed Stoneheart.”

“Yes.”

And it made her an oathbreaker, a person without honour.

Jaime rose from the stool and circled the tub.

Brienne slunk even lower until her chin touched the water as he bent his head close to her own.

“That creature ceased to be Lady Catelyn the moment her throat was cut.” He whispered in her ear.

“I swore an oath…” she insisted.

“As did I,” he replied, “and I broke it.” His hand cupped water from the bath and started washing the mud from her face and hair.

“You do not have to take all the blame for what fate brought you today,” Jaime said finally, but Brienne could hear anger in his voice. It was the tone she had oft heard one man use with another in the moments before steel came sliding out of scabbards. And something else, pain.

Brienne froze, unable to move. His touch was soft. So soft she started to tremble.

“Are you cold?” He asked her.

She shook her head swiftly from side to side, “I … I am fine Ser.” She assured him, ducking away from his hand to wash her hair and face herself, tentatively dabbing at the wound on her face, the bandage having been lost a while ago.

“What happened?” He asked, looking closely at the wound.

“A fight… I was bitten, by a man.”

“A man did that?” He asked, “And how much did I do by sending you into his path?”

“It was a fight,” she muttered defensively, “and it would have been far worse if he had taken an eye or,” her own gaze dropped to his golden hand resting on the edge of the tub, “something else…”

The air between them was tense until Jaime grinned at her and tapped his golden hand with his good one.

“As strange as it may sound, losing my hand seems to have improved my other faculties.”

She felt relief flood through her at his change of mood.

“More thinking,” Brienne asked gruffly, “less fighting?”

“Maybe,” Jaime continued to tap his hand as if thinking,” and the man that bit you is-?”

“Dead,” Brienne rubbed her face again, her eyes feeling as gritty as her skin. “Someone killed him with a spear to the head.”

“Good.” Jaime smiled a deathly smile, “He has saved me a job.”

She looked up at him, her face creased into a frown, “by the seven gods Ser Jaime, you don’t need to fight my battles for me.”

“Really Milady? And I thought I was doing so well even with so little information”

He had defeated Stoneheart’s men.

“You Ser Jaime, or your soldiers?”

“A Lannister hunting party, feeding Lannister soldiers,” Jaime shrugged, “a soldier has to eat. It was a lucky accident they came upon us.”

_It was a lie. It had to be._

He handed her a goblet of wine that smelt of herbs and then sat down upon the stool once more. She held the drink beneath her nose and sniffed at it suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, “it’s nothing bad. Something the maester suggested would help soothe the pain from your wounds. We’ll get him to clean and patch up your face once more later.”

She nodded briefly and took a swig. It was hot, bitter and the alcoholic fumes made her cough and splutter until she screwed her face up as far as she could.

“It’s medicinal. Drink it.” Was all he said to her.

Brienne forced it down, gagging slightly, and handed the goblet back to Jaime with a reproachful look, “that was disgusting.”

“Don’t be a baby,” he chided her.

“I think I have finished my bath,” she told him. “I would like to get out now.”

“I’m not stopping you.” His eyes flicked to where a pile of cloths sat in a pile on a chair.

He hadn’t changed, he was as infuriating as ever and she fixed him with a gimlet stare. “Are you going to pass me a cloth Ser?”

“No, I thought Pia was here to help you.”

“Pia?” The girl with the teeth, it had to be. Self-consciously, she ran her tongue over her own crooked and missing dentistry.

_What was it with Jaime Lannister and women with rather less than perfect teeth?_

“I… I sent her away,” Brienne admitted.

Jaime’s grin returned, “Shy, Brienne?”

She settled for a pulling a fierce face, desperate to quell the tug of attraction that resulted from him studying her so closely with that particular expression on his face, one that combined arrogance and devilry, “No.”

“Good.” Still the dratted man did not move.

With a mighty sigh, and much sloshing of water Brienne moved over to the side of the tub and leaned out as far as she was able, no doubt giving him a clear view of her backside and the backs of her thigh and knees as she reached across to snag herself a towel.

“Gods wench, I had forgotten how long your limbs are,” Jaime murmured in a voice that was laced half with humour, half with something else she could not place. He was still yet to stir from his seat. Brienne wrapped the cloth about her body, not caring if it fell in the water, just as long as she had some sort of barrier between her freckled skin and his all-seeing green gaze.

_I can feel him looking upon me and it’s as if someone is holding a candle so close the heat makes my skin burn._

Once covered, she scrambled out.

Brienne staggered a little on clearing the tub, forcing her to grip the side until the dizziness had passed, “I… I realised something when Stoneheart was about to hang me.” She paused, turning to where he had been sitting, but Jaime was no longer on the stool but suddenly beside her.

As his hand steadied her, his unique scent and presence swamped her.

Her thoughts, her regrets on still being a maid as she stood before Stoneheart came back to her.

Brienne fought down panic and took a deep breath. “I realised how much I wanted to…” Her resolution died away in the face of his implacably blank expression. She tried again.

“Jaime, I know I’m not going to be wed, I have always known it. But I find I do not want to live the whole of my life not knowing about …” she swallowed hard. “It is not something a woman can seek out… not without risks, not unless there is someone she can trust.” _As I trust you._

_Why can’t I tell him that?_

There was a humiliating pause, Brienne felt herself turn bright red yet again, “My apologies Ser, forget….”

“Do you trust me?” The underlying coolness that she had sensed from the moment she had been so slow to tell him of Stoneheart seemed to abate slightly, she could sense it, although she was still confused by how affected he had been, the hurt she sensed. Was it simply a matter of honour? Surely not.

“As you say there are risks,” he said steadily, his green eyes watchful. “Your reputation…”

“Is that of the Kingslayer’s whore,” Brienne pointed out to him her face becoming even redder.

“Do not blush like that, Brienne, you cannot start a conversation like this and then not be prepared to finish it.”

“I am sorry, I have spoken out of turn… it is inappropriate.” The apology was muttered through her own suddenly stiff lips, but something warmed the cool green eyes and she sensed him change his posture slightly, as if turning towards her. The wise thing would be to bid him a speedy good night, to seek her lonely bed now while she was still safe from the consequences of what she wanted so much. But she no longer wanted to be wise, or careful, or even safe. “Jaime, I know men have ways of dealing with their needs.” His expression of mingled shock and amusement put her in mind of the Jaime she knew of old rather than the newer less comfortable individual she was with now. “I have spent more time about men than I have women, I have listened and I have made sense where I can. But you have made me want something I do not understand. I don’t want to ache like this anymore, to suffer and not understand why it will not go away when I think of you.”

He was going to refuse her, she was certain. He was a beautiful man, a Lannister Lion, all golden locks and green eyes and she was merely a scarred huge beast of a woman whose only beauty had been her scrupulously guarded honour. And she didn’t even have that now.

Jaime tipped his face up slightly to regard her, his face serious. “Brienne, has anyone ever told you how beautiful your eyes are?”

And then he kissed her.

 

 


	2. Everyone has to Eat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has to eat, particularly if you have been fighting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely feedback and support.
> 
>  
> 
> All characters owned by GRRM.

Jaime looked down the table yet again, distantly aware of one of the younger Freys pausing mid- sentence beside him.

“Ser Jaime…”

“Yes,” but Jaime was at a loss to remember exactly what it was that his dinner companion was attempting to discuss. Or even who said dinner companion was. Jaime believed him to be Edwyn Frey’s representative or some such person. _Whoever he is, he certainly had a lot to say for himself_ , Jaime thought.

He could not concentrate. It was proving to be an interminable meal, albeit an opportunity for Jaime and his captains to catch up on the aftermath of the Brothers without Banners raid, intelligence gathered by both Frey and Lannister scouts, as well as a chance to break bread together and for people to see he was still very much alive. He was flanked by a surly Ser Lyle Crakehall, otherwise known as Strongboar, on one side and the vocal young Frey on the other. Ser Ilyn Payne sat in silence further down the long table chewing on his food much like an ox chews cud, and at the very end sat Brienne of Tarth.

Brienne sat awkwardly in her chair, picking at the miniscule amount of food she had placed on her plate. She said nothing to the men surrounding her, who were too busy eating and drinking to pay attention to her anyhow. Brienne was carefully avoiding his gaze, yet Jaime knew that people were starting to notice his attention wandering to the Maid of Tarth every few moments.

Jaime’s battle wise eye studied her critically, taking in her re-patched face and her carefully schooled expression.

Brienne of Tarth looked as if she could not move. Jaime had suffered enough with battle injuries and pain himself to recognise the effects in others, even when they were working so hard to hide it from those round them.

“Lew,” Jaime called out, cutting right across the Frey representative’s monologue once more, “where is the maester?”

“Still attending the wounded, my lord,”

“Ask him to attend me,” Jaime flicked his head towards the door and Lew promptly bowed and left his side to fetch the maester.

He could not help himself; he turned yet again to stare at her.

_It’s as if I can’t quite believe she’s actually here_ , he thought _, I’ve spent so long wondering where she might be and what she might be doing. Now I know._

Brienne had obviously taken the chance to study him while he was talking to his servant, not expecting him to turn his head and catch her in the act of looking at him, so Jaime took his opportunity and frowned at her, nodding at the near empty state of her plate. Brienne responded by rolling her eyes and staring back at him.

Jaime had to settle for narrowing his own eyes at her and pulling what he hoped was an intimidating face, _insolent wench._

He had been shocked when Brienne had climbed out of the bath tub and he had seen the bruising on her back and legs. The view of her ribs had been even more fleeting but he had seen the purple and yellow shadows on one side, so whilst all rather too fully aware of the length and strength of her limbs, he had been shocked at the evidence of her rough treatment at the hands of what he could only assume was the Brothers.

And then, possibly worst of all, Brienne had revealed to him how close to death she had actually been, not by what she had managed to say, but by what she had not.

_Her eyes had said it all._

They had been interrupted in those strange few minutes after her bath by the maester returning just as Jaime had been about to show her just how happy he was that she had not died, bruises and all.

_What was I thinking of, sending her out into the battleground that was the Riverlands alone, worse, with a sword and property that identified her so clearly as being something to do with me._

“And then there is the question of the red priest,” the young Frey was still talking but it became apparent that Jaime was not required to participate in the conversation so he settled for nodding at regular intervals whilst Ser Lyle continued to grumble away on his other side.

“There has been no sign of the red priest either dead or alive.”

“My Lord,” the maester appeared at Jaime’s elbow, bowing, “you asked for me to attend you?”

Jaime excused himself from the non conversation so that he could turn and ask the maester, “You completed your examination of the Maid of Tarth’s injuries did you not?”

“I did my Lord”

“And…”

The maester stepped closer to speak in Jaime’s ear. “Her face is healing well considering the depth of her wound.”

“I saw it was redressed.” Jaime studied the maester before once more looking down the table to where Brienne sat, “yet she still sits like a broken doll propped up against a wall. Did you attend to the wound on her leg?”

“I did, but I fear the pain from her ribs and arm may be more apparent now that the fighting is over.”

Jaime nodded briefly, understanding better than most the rush of excitement, the fear, and the whole experience of combat that could make one forget even the most serious of injuries as long as you were still able to wield a sword.

“I rather fear she may have broken her ribs some weeks past,” the maester confided in him, “and her arm shows evidence of having been splinted.”

Jaime sat back in his chair, wondering why he was even surprised at the news having seen the bruising for himself, _why did she say nothing about the pain when I hauled her back to camp?_

“She said nothing about being in pain.”

Brienne suddenly looked up at him, her eyes huge in her thinner, paler face. She flushed as she caught his gaze on her.

_Eyes as blue as the waters off Casterly Rock on a summer’s day,_ he thought.

_God’s Brienne, your oaths will be the death of you_ , he thought, _and maybe even me._

One of the men next to Brienne returned to his seat, the jostling making her wince and shrink in on herself even further.

The men around her were laughing, talking of fighting and women. It had to be more about the latter than the former as in truth he had used every trick at his disposal to prevent any of them having to raise arms in the Riverlands even once since they had set forth from King’s Landing.

Brienne alone had probably done more serious fighting than anyone sitting at the table with her, certainly since Lannister forces had clashed with those of Stannis and the Stark boy.

As Jaime sat contemplating his dining companions, he became aware of the Frey lad warming up to continue his conversation, and of the maester standing patiently by, waiting to be dismissed as his learned stomach complained noisily at a lack of food.

“Maester,” Jaime lurched to his feet, scraping his chair back before standing and pushing the maester into his seat, “you must eat.”

“But my lord…” he protested.

“Your job will be better done if your stomach was not rumbling quite so loudly,” Jaime advised him, “Sit and eat.” He had had enough of his knights making him feel guilty for having abandoned them to pursue Brienne deep into the Riverlands. Having just caught sight of the Maid of Tarth being bumped and jostled by yet another Lannister lordling leaving the meal to find a tree outside to piss against, he saw an opportunity.

Moving quickly down the table, Jaime Lannister completely ignored the usual pecking order to sit without ceremony in the spare seat next to Brienne.

“What are you doing?” She asked him, her eyes flicking over the other diners as she registered their reaction to his move.

“Coming to sit next to you,” Jaime informed her, reaching across to lift her metal drinking goblet and shaking it.

“I don’t think people were expecting you to move from the head of the table to the foot, Ser Jaime,” she said.

“Were they not?” Jaime could not help his amusement at the expressions on some of the faces at the other end, “I can’t think why.” He could of course. Sitting down to such dinners, even in the field, was as much to do with diplomacy as it was to do with food. He’d always sat at the head of the table; it came with being the eldest Lannister son. All the others, be they Brax, Stackspear, the Swyfts, or whatever, they all seemed to know where their place was.

The Maid of Tarth, however, did not.

“You don’t need to come and sit with me,” she whispered fiercely, “I’m fine.”

Finding her drinking goblet empty, Jaime stood and retrieved a jug of ale from further up the table and then sat down to pour her a drink.

“Ah, well, I am not I’m afraid. Is our plain soldier’s fare not good enough for you Milady?”

Brienne pulled a face, “It is fine… the food is…” she looked at the bread, the fresh game and the ale and with an expression that looked almost hopeless, “wonderful,” she said on a guilty sigh.

“So then eat some,” Jaime suggested, leaning his right forearm on the nearest loaf, all the better to break a chunk of bread off with his left hand and put it on her plate.

She caught his arm as he looked likely to seize a plate of meat from in front of the men to their left. “People are looking,” Brienne pointed out to him.

“Let them,” Jaime leant across and added the meat to her plate anyway, “eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” she insisted, gingerly shifting her position, wincing as she did so.

“I don’t believe you Brienne. Eat, your body needs food if it is to mend itself properly,” he said softly. Jaime then leant back and shouted, “Lew, salt.”

Brienne rolled her eyes, before making a noise somewhere between a sigh and a grunt of exasperation.

“Or I can feed you myself,” Jaime leant forward in his chair once more so his head almost touched hers, his tone a cross between a dare and a threat.

“You would not,” she replied indignant.

“Try me,” Jaime replied evenly, smiling slightly as she shot him a panicked look. “ I'm more than willing. Or, you could try a little bread and meat all by yourself.”

Brienne glared at him with a scorching blue gaze before moving one hand onto the plate and taking the smallest morsel of bread, and then meat, from the metal dish, putting it delicately in her mouth.

“Well done,” he congratulated dryly.

Brienne watched him as she chewed slowly, “it’s good.”

“Of course it’s good. I won’t bore you with how long my men were out hunting for it,” he dropped his voice and glanced down the table as he said softly in her ear, “though you more than most have probably got some idea.”

Jaime watched her pick at the items he had placed in front of her for a few moments, before raising his gaze to stare down a few of the curious looks that were being directed at them both.

“Ser Addam seems very cross,” Brienne observed.

“Ser Addam was not very happy at being abandoned by his one handed Lord Commander,” Jaime replied, “He obviously feels I am not taking my duties seriously enough.”

“Not true. I have heard much talk of your negotiating skills,” Brienne told him, “The surrender of Riverrun amongst them.”

“Indeed,” Jaime found himself warmed that she had taken note, yet slightly embarrassed that it had to be the surrender of the Tully stronghold to the Freys that she had chosen as her example. It was if Lady Catelyn haunted them still. In fact his negotiations at Raventree had come even after that, finally resolving the last remnant of the Young Wolf’s short-lived kingdom.  He was unable to resist adding, “that is of course about all I am good for now, a deal of talking and someone to ride at the front of the column for people to gawp at.”

“That is not all you can do,” Brienne picked up another small morsel of food and put it in her mouth, swallowing before taking a gulp of ale. “I saw you fight.”

“Me?” Jaime pulled a face, “Are you sure?”

“I saw you fight,” she insisted, “I was at your back before I was hit on the head by an idiot.”

Jaime picked up the ale jug once more and filled her cup to the top, “If you did, it was poorly done and if you have any love for me at all you will not mention my efforts to frighten the Brothers with my wretched left-handed swordplay.”

_Love._

His careless use of that word was enough to make her flush bright red and look as if someone had squeezed her broken bones.

“I had better go… please excuse me Ser,” Brienne made as if to leave but no sooner had she placed her hands on the arms of the chair and commenced struggling to her feet, Jaime’s left hand blocked her departure. The wind outside rattled the tent making the candles gutter, bringing a cold reminder of the weather without.

“Where did you think to sleep?”

“That is not for you to worry about,” Brienne replied.

“Broken ribs and a damaged arm? I think it is,” Jaime shook his head, “Were you not happy with the existing arrangement?”

Exhausted after being treated by the maester, she had fallen asleep in his bed. He had slept close by on a servant’s put-up.

_Best night sleep I have had for some time_ , he acknowledged to himself _, I’ve missed her company more than even I could ever have realised._

“I cannot deny you yet another night in your own bed Lord Commander,” she responded, all formality, doing her best to move without wincing, “I would insist that we come to some other arrangement.”

_She dearly looks as if she would like to tell me that it is none of my concern, but she is not in a position to do so,_ he thought as he watched her struggle with her pride.

Jaime simply rose to his feet, waiting patiently for her to heave herself up onto hers also. She paused as if waiting for him to leave her side, frowning when he did not. “We cannot leave together,” Brienne told him in a harsh undertone, slowly as if spelling it out to a child, “the hour is late, and it will look… odd.”

“Why?” Jaime had to ask, even if only to hear her attempt to spell it out to him.

“People will talk.”

_Ah, people again._

“People? I see no people,” Jaime looked around as he waited patiently for her to move, “I do see soldiers, Lannister and Frey soldiers who take their orders from me. If necessary I will make it clear there is to be no talk.”

Brienne made a small, rather helpless sound, “Jaime that would just make it worse.”

“Let them talk then,” he told her dismissively, “and don’t worry.”

She rolled her eyes in response to his words, “Do you not realise that they look at us and think there goes the Kingslayer and the Kingslayer’s whore? Or even, the Kingslayer and the whore?”

Jaime really didn’t see what her problem was, and he was not about to let her struggle back to his pavilion in the mud and darkness.

“Do you think I care what they think of me?” He asked her

“No, I don’t think you care,” she replied as she finally stood up straight and was able to look him in the eye, “And neither would I if I was the one commonly referred to as the Kingslayer.”

Jaime studied her face for a moment, looking long and hard into her blue eyes before moving to whisper in her ear, “Then go alone if you must, and I will follow you shortly… ,” he allowed himself a small smile before he ducked back and added in a tone chosen to provoke, “Kingslayer.”


	3. The maiden fair...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Brienne spends some time trying to keep a low profile...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your lovely comments and observations. Let me know if you are getting bored yet...
> 
> All characters owned by GRRM.

Hidden away in a quiet corner of the Lannister encampment, a silent Brienne sat on a low stool, carefully sharpening her spare sword on an oiled whetstone, Oathkeeper lay on a cloth to one side.

She could almost hear the ancient armourer of Evenfall Hall talking to her as she worked ‘what you are doing to your sword is polishing, not grinding’, passing the blade over the stone at a well-practiced angle. Long slow strokes, back and forth, occasionally stopping to check the blade before starting the process all over again.

It was a good way to recuperate, both mentally and physically.

_A peaceful, satisfying task that has a very beneficial effect on one’s nerves,_ she thought to herself, _and it is just what I need_.

Never had being idle been quite so stressful.

Brienne had taken to absenting herself during the day, a little too aware that she was trailing after Jaime as he went about his business with the Frey and Lannister forces. All too aware of how people liked to talk, all too painfully aware of how men liked to gossip, and it seemed prudent to disappear from the Kingslayer’s side during the hours of daylight when people might start to speculate as to why she was always there.

It was shocking enough that she was still occupying his tent at night. Brienne would often lie awake in the darkness and listen to his even breathing as he slumbered in a nearby cot. Then in the morning she would pretend to be asleep so she could watch him through half closed eyes as he rose from his bed like a beautiful tousled lion, ready to prepare for the day ahead.

Brienne had suggested to him that maybe it would be more appropriate if she slept elsewhere, but Jaime simply ignored her or came up with a perfectly good reason why she should stay. So she remained where she was.

_Sometimes, it was almost enough just to be near him._

“Have you seen Lady Brienne of Tarth? I have been sent to bring her some water and vinegar.”

_At last! Just how long did it take for a squire to get vinegar from a cook in this camp?_ The vinegar was to improve the look of the newly sharpened blade, but at this rate the blade would acquire the required patina through age, not acid.

_Maybe I should have simply gone myself,_ Brienne wondered _._

But then the lad looking for her now had a higher voice than the one she had sent Brienne realised. Had Jaime redirected his squire from her errand and sent another instead?

“She’s over yonder,” was the gruff reply, the voice sounding like Ser Kennos of Kayce, but it was difficult to tell.

Brienne waited for the lad to appear, but he did not.

“Is she as ugly as they say?” the boy finally asked Kennos, his voice hesitant.

“Is that what they say lad?”

_Of course that’s what they say_ , thought Brienne glumly, _that I’m a big, ugly, lumbering wench of a woman._

“Aye a monstrously big, ugly lady that’s hairier than a bear,” was the lad’s response.

Brienne blushed painfully red, although there was no one present to witness her embarrassment.

“Someone has actually told you that the Lady Brienne is hairier than a bear?”

“Aye, that’s what they say.”

“And you believe them?”

Brienne heard Ser Kennos put down whatever he was holding.

“Do you know who Ser Ronnet Connington is?”

“Aye, two griffins on a field of red and white, a knight, he was sent with released prisoners to Maidenpool …”

“Do you remember how he lost a tooth?”

There was a burst of youthful laughter.

“I remember him. He walked into a post he said… at Harrenhal!” The boy continued to chuckle.

“He walked into a golden fist more like!” Brienne heard Ser Kennos spit on the floor, “he was the last man who compared Brienne of Tarth to a bear within Ser Jaime Lannister’s hearing.”

Brienne did not hear the boy’s response, she was so dumbfounded herself she had to put her sword down carefully rather than drop it from numb fingers.

_Was he saying Jaime hit Connington?_ _  
_

“If you don’t want to be eating your own teeth for supper boy, I would remember that Lady Brienne is a noblewoman and not for the likes of you to judge. You do what she asks promptly and courteously, and I suggest you don’t listen to those idiots about camp that might think it any different,” Kennos sounded like he was bending down to pick something up, as he carried on to say, “if Ser Jaime Lannister hears you referring to Lady Brienne with anything other than the greatest respect you’ll be picking your teeth out of the back of your throat with a fork, if he doesn’t slice you in half first.”

“But he’s only got one real hand,” from his choked response, the boy was obviously terrified.

“He’s the Kingslayer you stupid boy, he doesn’t need two hands to stick you like a pig.” The invisible Ser Kennos was obviously warming to his subject with such enthusiasm that Brienne was on the verge of intervening on the boy’s behalf although neither would thank her for it. Of that she was sure. “He stuck a sword in the back of a king just for being mad… what do you think he’ll do to a boy who insults his lady.”

“Kill me?”

“Aye, if you are lucky. Lady Brienne of Tarth, that’s her name, boy. Use it, because you don’t know who might be listening.”

Brienne jumped slightly at his words.

_He must suspect she was listening._

“However ugly or homely the maid may be,” said Ser Kennos.

_Or possibly he did not!_

She didn’t hear them leave, she most certainly did not get the vinegar and water brought to her as she had requested an age ago. Instead Brienne sat on her stool and stared at the blades of her swords, a distorted version of her face staring right back at her.

_Jaime,_ she thought, _why did you do that? You can’t defend every single slur against me._

The memories of Red Ronnet brought the bitter taste of bile to her mouth _. What could he have possibly said that was enough to provoke Jaime into losing control in such a way?_

That Jaime Lannister seemed prepared to even try to defend her perplexed her. That a man, a creature as aware of the politics of every situation as Jaime, was prepared to put all that to one side in order to physically punish someone who had been less than polite about her, was ridiculous.

It hadn’t been to her face, she had not even been there to witness it.

_Why? Why would he do that?_

_Was it because that was what friends did for each other?_  Maybe that was Jaime defending her the way she had moved to defend his back in those last few desperate moments outside the Brother’s hideout. And she knew well the kind of emotion that would burn in her when she heard people carelessly use the term ‘Kingslayer’ when referring to him.

Maybe Jaime had simply acted on the kind of anger she so often felt when people called him names in that certain nasty tone that implied oathbreaker, man without honour and all the rest of it.

Brienne sighed and bent to pick up her swords from the ground, but as she did so a flash of colour caught her eye. A slight movement in the trees on the boundary of the camp attracted her attention, and then kept it, as she picked up a weapon in each hand and advanced on where she had last seen something of note.

“Who is there?” She called out, walking on boldly into the treeline, crushing bracken beneath her feet as she went. “Declare yourself.”

The silence enfolded her as she deliberately stilled. The ferns were so high it was well-nigh impossible to move without making all manner of noise, so if an intruder was present he could hardly escape without revealing his position.

She scanned the brown and green undergrowth twice with a keen eye before she saw him, peering out from between a large clump of bracken and a tree.

A grizzled looking man with sparse grey hair, ragged, his barely visible robe showing evidence of pink and red. It was then that Brienne recognized him, “Thoros?”

At her whisper of recognition, the Myrish priest flinched back, took to his heels and ran through the trees, making more noise than Brienne would have thought possible. “Thoros!” shouting, she gave chase, running as fast as she could, crashing through ferns, dodging trees, leaping fallen logs in an effort to catch up with him. She ran and ran until she thought her lungs would burst, the pain from her ribs excruciating, but it was no good. He was more nimble on his feet than she would ever be and was gone even as she realised it.

Winded Brienne could only stand and catch her breath as best she could, leaning on her swords, bent in half. Her damaged ribs made every breath feel like her last. She could hear rain falling on the leaves of the trees all around her, and as she looked about there was not one tree or branch that was familiar. Turning back the way she had come, what she could see was a wide tract of broken bracken marking where she had ploughed through the undergrowth in pursuit of the red wizard.

_Maybe being a big, lumbering creature had some advantages after all,_ she thought wryly as she started back along the path of flattened forest ferns to the Lannister encampment.

 

 

It was some time later that Brienne walked slowly into camp, carrying her swords under her arm, picking her way to Jaime’s pavilion carefully around the mud and slurry that had built up during their stay. As she walked into the large entrance of the red Lannister tent, she was aware of three sets of eyes instantly fixed on her.

“Where have you been?” The tone of Jaime’s voice turned a reasonable question into what sounded to Brienne’s ears, almost like a criticism. Ser Kennos and Ser Lyle Crakehall were in attendance. Jaime was sitting in a chair with a scroll in front of him, tapping the table with the index finger of his good hand.

“Sharpening my weapons,” she explained looking down at the scroll, “keeping busy. You should try it. Why, what have you been doing?”

“Torturing myself with paperwork, and wondering where you had managed to disappear to.” Jaime flicked his head towards the entrance, and with a nod and a bow Kennos and Crakehall made their excuses and left, “you could have come out as far as the first river with me this morning.”

“With your men?” asked Brienne.

“Of course,” Jaime smiled wickedly, “trying to get me on my own again Brienne?”

She snorted and looked down at him, her expression one of exasperation, “I have been trying to keep talk to a minimum, not make it worse.”

“Ahhhh,” replied Jaime. _One of his ‘four syllables where one would do’ responses._

_Idiot,_ Brienne thought. _He just does not care what people say about him at all._

“I do not have to get you alone, it may have escaped your attention but we are alone now.” She told him, picking a forgotten scroll up from the floor and placing it on the table for him.

“Oh, so we are,” Jaime’s mock surprise was enough to make her shake her head at him and pull a face. “You are right…. quite alone in fact.”

The look he gave her as she did so was unsettling.

_I wonder if he even knows how expressive his face is,_ she wondered.

“I thought I saw something, someone, on the edge of camp today,” she told him conversationally, determined to change the topic as she watched him deftly roll up the scroll with one hand and throw it into a box, “just as I was packing up to come back.”

“Which?” Jaime asked her climbing to his feet, the box under his right arm, “someone or something?”

“Someone,” Brienne replied absently, as she wiped the swords before replacing them in their scabbards, “I went to have a look, I found him eventually, but I couldn’t catch him.”

Jaime became very still, watchful, “And why would you want to do that?”

“Catch him? Because it was Thoros,” Brienne told him, “you know, the red priest.”

“I know who Thoros of Myr is, Brienne,” all softness was suddenly gone, Jaime’s expressive gaze changing in an instant to one looking as if it was hewn from stone, “so you are telling me you followed him on your own?”

“Yes,” Brienne shrugged, puzzled but feeling she owed Jaime at least an explanation as to how he got away, “but he was far too quick for me.”

“You went alone into the forest after him?”

“Well yes, I was only…”

“You do know we are sending out three man patrols, Brienne?” Jaime was suddenly every inch the Lord Commander and as he took a step towards her, she took an involuntary step back stammering as she went, “I… yes, no, well of course.”

“Yet you investigate alone?”

“I chased him,” Brienne’s eyes widened as she realised that she may have erred, “it was hardly an investigation Ser… more of a quick look!”

“That could have cost you dearly,” Jaime was almost toe to toe with her, his gaze so compelling she couldn’t look away although she dearly wanted to stare at the floor, or the ceiling, or anywhere as long as it was not at him. “What would you have done if he had turned and made a fight of it?”

“Beaten him,” Brienne snapped back.

“And if he had led you into a trap?”

“I am more than capable of looking after myself, _Ser_ Jaime,” she informed him bluntly.

“As are any number of my knights and men, _Lady_ Brienne, but they still go in _threes_!” Jaime’s jaw was clenched, a muscle twitched in his cheek as he stared at her, “One to look, one to guard him and another to guard the first two. These are dangerous times Brienne, I don’t need to tell you that there are outlaws, people who would cut your throat for the clothes on your back, hiding in those woods do I?”

Brienne shook her head. He was right, of course he was.

_Stoneheart had been one of them._

“I will… refrain from… er, investigating beyond the perimeter of the camp Ser Jaime.” She conceded stiffly, looking at his stern face briefly as she did so.

Looking at him now, angry, unhappy with her pursuing Thoros of Myr into the trees, it was hard to imagine him hitting Connington. Jaime Lannister looked like he would more likely throttle her than knock somebody into the dirt for her.

Jaime took a deep breath and captured her gaze with his, the emerald green lights catching the reflection of the fires that were being lit about them in the braziers.

“Brienne,” he looked at the floor and then back up to recapture her gaze, “you said yourself, people notice-“

Brienne frowned at him, unsure as to quite what this new approach might bring her.

“People notice you.” Jaime finally said, but still his brow was furrowed and his expression hard to divine, “and they take notice of me.”

“Well you are-“Brienne started but the words froze mid-sentence as his left hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed gently.

“Brienne, other people _notice_ ,” he looked so deeply into her eyes she felt as if she was losing herself, “it is not that much of a step from name calling to something far worse. Someone might realise that it would be possible to get to me, through you. Stoneheart did.”

Brienne snatched a breath as Jaime said the name.

“Well next time I will know better than to ask you to come with me,” Brienne replied, the shame of her tricking Jaime into accompanying her back to Lady Stoneheart’s lair making her voice harsher than she had intended.

“Brienne,” he gave her shoulder a shake, “I will always come with you, whether you ask me to or not.”

“Well, that is simply ridiculous,” she told him.

“You would not do the same for me, Lady Brienne?”

Brienne did not have to say anything, as a traitorous blush did it for her. She could feel it crawl its way up from her chest to her neck, its burning progress sweeping her face with its heat. It was clearly a given that she would.

“Of course,” she mumbled, “you do not even have to ask.”

“So why would it be any different for me?”

_Because I love you,_ she thought, _that’s why._

_That’s why I hate people calling you names; Kingslayer, oath breaker, man without honour. You are none of those things. You have never been any of those things to me._

_And the difference is that you don’t love me Jaime Lannister, not the way that I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think he might though...


	4. Thoros of Myr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Jaime wishes he had left the drunk bloke under the tree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your lovely comments….  
> All characters owned by GRRM.

_“Oh, sweet she was, and pure and fair!_

_The maid with honey in her hair!_

_Her hair! Her hair!_

_The maid with honey in her hair!”_ sang Thoros of Myr, loudly and tunelessly from two horses back.

Jaime looked across at Brienne, who turned in her saddle to look back at the singing priest. Her face was an unreadable mask, but her blue eyes revealed a simmering anger that gave Jamie one of his more amusing moments on the morning patrol.

_Gods, if looks could turn a man to stone, Thoros of Myr would be a slab of rock atop a horse by now._

_“_ Our red priest seems very cheerful for a captured outlaw,” he observed as Brienne turned to face forwards again, her face dour.  _Ah, my sweet sour faced wench,_  Jaime thought, amused at her annoyance. “I can sense that you are not entertained by his singing, but…”

“I do not care what he does.” Brienne snapped back at him.

“Of course not,” Jaime replied soothingly. Brienne was taking Thoros of Myr’s choice of song personally, and to make it worse the soldiers in the patrol were constantly looking at the Maid of Tarth as if to judge her reaction to the Myrish priest.

The events of Harrenhal still followed them both in curious ways.

Jaime turned to look ahead, smiling as he heard Brienne sigh and huff at Thoros attempting another verse of the song in an even more tuneless voice. Travelling alongside her lifted his spirits and made him feel almost cheerful as they both rode at the head of the morning patrol. Brienne’s face was set in one of fierce concentration as she scanned the hedgerows for danger, scowling at any suspicious characters standing by the wayside as their patrol passed.

It had been Brienne that had spotted Thoros of Myr sat beneath a large tree, as drunk as a lord, and as far as Jaime could tell, quite happy to be captured. That a man, who had beaten Sandor Clegane, at least three times to his knowledge, should now be brought so low as to simply laugh at them as they bound him and sat him on a horse, mystified Jaime.

_Why didn’t he fight?_

Then he caught sight of Thoros of Myr’s sly glance down at Brienne’s bowed head as she checked the rope that bound him to the saddle.

_“And down the road from here to there!_

_From here! To there!_

_Three boys, a goat and a dancing bear!”_ the priest bellowed at the top of his voice.

“Ye Gods, Jaime,” Brienne muttered as she turned in her saddle yet again to look at the Myrish minstrel, “does the man never stop?”

_“The bear! The bear!”_ sang Thoros.

“It would appear not”, Jaime replied observing Brienne’s pale face, the shadows under her eyes as she stared angrily at Thoros, and then back at her horse’s ears again.

She had slept badly last night. He had heard her tossing and turning in the bed, muttering and calling out in her dreams. He was not surprised when she turned her face to him, despite the firmly clamped jaw and uncompromising line of her mouth her blue eyes were enough to make him rein in and offer to silence their prisoner.

 Jaime turned his horse off to one side and waited for Thoros to pass by before urging his horse into a trot to bring his mount alongside that of the Myrish priest.

“Well met Kingslayer,” Thoros roared.

“Well met yourself Thoros of Myr,” Jaime replied softly, running his eye over the priest’s shabby clothing. “You seem remarkably cheerful for a man who has just been taken prisoner by what would seem to pass as the law in these parts.”

“Times are hard Kingslayer,” Thoros spat at the ground beneath his horse, “but you’ll feed me before you hang me Lannister, and that alone is enough to make me happy.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” Jaime asked him.

“Well it’s certainly not an insult,” Thoros replied, starting to hum, though thankfully not to sing.

They rode on for some time, Thoros silent as he stared at the head of the patrol where the Maid of Tarth led the way, clad in her borrowed Lannister armour, an old red cloak of Jaime’s over her broad shoulders.

“I don’t think red is her colour,” Thoros observed as he watched.

“Your so called brotherhood stole the clothes and the suit of armour she wore into the Riverlands when you captured her,” Jaime told him bluntly, “you might not think that it suits her, but I like her in the Lannister colours well enough.”

Thoros glanced at him briefly before looking away.

“She called for you, you know,” the priest told him.

Jaime did not answer, simply turning to face Thoros with an expression of polite enquiry, but the priest was still staring at Brienne with a faraway look in his bright eyes.

“The Maid of Tarth called for you again and again, even as she lay in a fever on the floor of that cave.”

Jaime felt a cold chill chase down his spine as he realised Thoros of Myr was referring to Brienne’s time as a captive of the Brotherhood without Banners.

“She called for you even as I thought she was going to be claimed by the Great Other, still she called your name. I wondered why she would do that,” Thoros spat at the ground again, “even when she was delirious, mad with pain and as good as dead, Kingslayer.”

A dark cloud passed over Jaime’s day that was nothing to do with the weather.

_A world without my maid,_  Jaime thought, thinking the unthinkable for the briefest of moments.

It didn’t bear thinking of.

“The Brother’s took to calling her whore, the Kingslayer’s whore.”

Jaime shifted in his saddle so that he could give Thoros the full impact of his disapproval.

“I wouldn’t say that again within my hearing,” Jaime told him, “I might take exception to it.”

“Would you make me sorry?” the Myrish priest goaded him, dropping his good humour for the briefest of moments to show the dangerous man beneath the affable facade, “Could you make me sorry?”

“I could,” Jaime assured him, “Or I could get one of my men at arms to do it for me.”

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment before Thoros nodded slowly and then looked away as if conceding the point.

“I heard about the hand,” he glanced back at Jaime’s golden hand and frowned, “I take it that it wasn’t lost to a direwolf then.”

“No, it was a goat,” replied Jaime.

Thoros’ sudden roar of laughter made Brienne turn around and glower at them even more fiercely.

She did not look best pleased at the pair of them falling slightly behind the rest of the patrol.

“Your woman does not approve,” Thoros chuckled.

Jaime did not correct him as to exactly whose woman Brienne was, “She wonders why you wanted to be caught Thoros,” was all he said, “as do I.”

Thoros simply stared at him, his expression fixed, giving nothing away before grimacing slightly. “I didn’t plan to ever be caught,” he replied, “but then, rather unexpectedly, I saw your lady in a dream.”

“You dreamt of Brienne? Not many men claim they dream of Brienne of Tarth,” Jaime told him in a tone of mild amusement.

_Apart from me,_ he thought.

“But I did. And what a dream it was… one that was dark and full of terrors,” suddenly Thoros looked old beyond his years. “When Beric died, I chose to look into the fire for the first time in a long, long time. And what do you think I saw?”

“You tell me,” Jaime told him, his tone dry.

“Nothing, I saw absolutely nothing.” Thoros suddenly gave a self-deprecating grin, “I thought then, that’s it. It’s over… I am done with this. But then your maid of Tarth was captured by the Brotherhood, ill, fevered, calling for the sword you gave her, so close to death I could almost feel it’s breath upon her face. Then that very night, after so much time thinking I would never again be blessed by the Lord of Light, I had a dream. And what a dream it was… dark, terrifying and desperate.” He looked at Jaime, his expression that of one thrilled by what he had seen rather than repulsed, “I do not believe in coincidence. She was in that dream… as were you, Ser Jaime Lannister.”

Jaime stared at Thoros for the briefest of moments, before shaking his head and then fixing the red priest with a scornful look, “if you are looking for someone who believes in flaming swords and a destiny written in blood you are in the wrong place, Thoros. We are soldiers here. We fight, if we win, we live, and if not, we die. There is no more.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you,” was all Thoros replied.

Jaime wheeled his horse about and gave the red priest one last long look, “Yes, I would wouldn’t I… and Thoros, if I hear you have been disturbing Lady Brienne with your stories, I will not be happy.”

Thoros simply stared at him, his face expressionless.

“Good, so long as we understand each other.” Jaime said, his voice cold.

With that, Jaime dug his heels into his mount's sides and appeased his anger at Thoros of Myr’s words by galloping recklessly back to Brienne’s side at the head of the group of soldiers.

Brienne watched as his horse slid to a shuddering halt with a mildly disapproving air.

“You were speaking with the red priest for a long time Jaime, what did he have to say?” she asked him.

“That he dreamed of you.” Jaime told her bluntly.

“What do you mean?” asked a shocked Brienne, her blue eyes instantly seeking his own, her disbelief clear to see. “Why would anyone dream of me?”

Jaime simply looked at her as she pulled a face, sniffed, and then finally said, “Well, at least you silenced him.”

_“But he licked the honey from her hair._

_Her hair! Her hair!_

_He licked the honey from her hair!”_  started Thoros again.

“Ye Gods Jaime,” Brienne sighed and looked at him, "really?"

“I did what I could,” was all Jaime said.

 

They arrived back at the camp, and Thoros was still rather too full of himself for Jaime’s liking.

“Take him, make him wash and feed him,” Jaime told his soldiers.

“How very civilised of you,” Brienne observed as she dismounted from her horse.

“He wears his dirt like a badge of honour,” Jaime replied, “we’ll find him some clean clothes, preferably something with a bloody big lion on it so anyone who believes him anything like a real wizard can see he is a wizard with Lannister claws in him.”

_And I’m an expert on what a prisoner might think he can do,_  thought Jaime, thinking on the man he had known as he rushed into the breach at the Pyke, _and Thoros of Myr thinks he can do more than most._ Jaime watched the red priest as Lannister soldiers pulled him from his horse, Thoros staring right back at him the entire time.

_He's trouble, and now he's in the middle of my camp._

 

It was much later that Jaime lay awake in his cot staring at the cloth ceiling of his tent, the wind had picked up and was pulling at the canvas walls of the Lannister pavilion as it blew. The low burning brazier close by guttered slightly in the draft, and Jaime was wondering to himself if Brienne had heard anything he had said about Thoros of Myr to Addam Marbrand earlier.

It was sometimes so easy to forget that Brienne was in his tent at all, she was so quiet.

_Not tonight though,_ thought Jaime, as the reason he lay awake fought her covers in the bed across from him, moaning and tossing in her sleep for the third night running.

“Jaime,” she mumbled, turning over yet again, flinging one long arm over her face, the other to dangle over the edge of the bed.

“Brienne?” he whispered, thinking she was asking if he was awake.

“Jaime!” but Brienne did not hear him, as it very quickly became clear she was still fast asleep. She was locked in her dreams, her voice hoarse as she moaned plaintively, “Jaime, come back for me!”

That was the final straw and with one bound Jaime was out from under his covers, and onto her bed.

“Brienne?” he shook her shoulder urgently, his left hand dark against the pale freckled skin of her shoulder as it peeked out of the open neck of her shirt, “Brienne, wake up… you are having a bad dream. He shook her gently again.

“Jaime!” She was still asleep.

“Wake up Brienne!” He tucked his right arm round her and with his left hand pushed the mop of stringy blonde hair back from her face. Cheek to cheek with her, he shook her gently, willing her to open her eyes and look at him.

_It is just a dream,_ he told himself _, nothing to do with bloody Thoros of Myr and his strange ways, nothing to do with the ridiculous quest I sent her on to find Sansa Stark, a quest that almost killed her._

_Nothing to do with the red priest’s visions._

“Brienne?” he whispered, “Brienne wake up!”

Her arms flailed briefly and then fell onto Jaime’s back where they swept across his skin, before hesitantly slowing as her fingers finally came into contact with his lean hips.

His initial concern gone, Jaime grinned into her hair as it became apparent that she had finally regained consciousness simply by the fact that she had no idea what to do with her hands.

_Cersei would have seized his buttocks, digging her fingers deep into the flesh, and pulled him greedily towards her._

Brienne’s hands fluttered in confusion for a few moments before landing primly on the bed by her sides.

“Jaime?” she whispered back, “what are you doing in my bed?”

“On your bed,” Jaime corrected her, “I’m _on_ your bed wench.”

“Oh,” was all she said as she lay stiffly beneath him.

Jaime wriggled his hips a little to get comfortable, and if possible his grin grew even wider as Brienne gasped breathlessly, “Jaime!”

_When had that happened?_

When had he realised he liked hearing his name on her lips quite as much as he did.

_Jaime!_ She would snap at him.

_Jaime…_ She’d growled at him on more than one occasion.

_Jaime!_ Her voice as he settled between her thighs had been like no tone he had heard her use with him before.

It had sounded a lot like desire.

That was fine. He could work with that.


	5. For the night is dark...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Brienne finds a lion on the bed...
> 
> Happy JB Appreciation week everyone... I'm working on something for day 5!

Brienne woke to find her nose buried in a mane of blond hair that smelt faintly of herbs, lemon and Jaime. Her hands lay on what could only be Jaime Lannister's-

"Jaime?" 

_-backside?_

"What are you doing in my bed?" she all but squawked in a strangled whisper, her heart starting to pound and her palms sweat as she dropped them hastily to her sides.

Jaime gave a reassuring snort of amusement. 

" _On_  your bed," he corrected her, "I'm  _on_  your bed wench." 

He was of course absolutely right. Jaime was  _on_  her bed not  _in_  it.

 _"Oh,"_ was all she could say as she lay beneath him, willing herself not to react. _Shame,_  a tiny voice inside Brienne's head lamented, as a pair of the most beautiful green eyes Brienne had ever seen, stared into hers. Eyes so close, she could see flecks of gold mixed in with emerald and jade.

By the seven, even the scent of him was a torture. All day she had had to stand by his side, listen to him coax and prevail upon his commanders to do what he wanted them to do; only occasionally resorting to direct instructions when he had to. It was as well, Brienne thought wildly, to be careful what you wished for. She had shut away her emotions and had worked so hard to be as efficient and as effective as any man of her acquaintance, and now she had to live with the consequences. Jaime saw her as a reliable soldier; someone he knew would get things done even if he didn't always trust her to do it his way. Which was wonderful. He was also treating her like a man, which surprisingly, given it was the kind of recognition she had been trying her whole life for, was not.

It was all so confusing.

 _Well, he might not be in my bed, but he is on my bed, and right on top of me!_ Brienne realised, a glorious dead weight of male muscle, bone and sinew pinning her to the covers. She could feel every part of him bearing down on her, the sheer heat of his body overwhelming given the coldness of the night.

And then he did something with his hips, _some wicked wriggling thing!_

 _"_ Jaime! _"_ She all but groaned as the movement fired off a million nerve endings in parts of her body she did not even want to think about.

_Certainly not right now anyhow!_

She loved Jaime; she was not just in love with him. That alone was a revelation that had never occurred to her until she had personally experienced both types of love and was able to tell the difference. Her passion for Renly had been her first experience of the emotion, a love that was as much about being in that state as it was about Renly Baratheon. Jaime loved Cersei, and it was an uncomfortable fact that Brienne had been there to witness him walking across half the country just to be with her again.

_Like Renly, Jaime Lannister was simply not interested and never would be._

Jaime's green gaze flicked over her face, making her wonder how much she gave away without even saying a word.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked so suddenly her heart leapt into her throat.

"Things I want." It was a miracle she had not blurted out, you.

"Like what?"

"My bed back," she replied.

“I think you mean  _my_  bed,” Jaime grinned wickedly.

Brienne huffed once, twice, and then settled for glowering at him as best she could whilst being totally overwhelmed by everything about him. “That is a problem easily solved as I can always sleep in the servant’s cot instead of you.” She stared at him for a moment and then went to heave Jaime Lannister off her body so she could swap their beds.

It would seem, however, that Jaime had different ideas.

Jaime lay on top of her, riding her furious struggling much like a ship upon a mildly choppy sea, watching her as she heaved and pushed with an expression of great amusement.

“Jaime!” she puffed, as she tried one final attempt to push him off with an almighty shove, “Get off!”

“No Brienne,” he whispered in her ear as she continued to struggle to get her body out from underneath him, “I will not.”

Finally she stopped, exhausted, still pinned to the bed.

“I told you given a fair contest I would be stronger,” he grinned.

_Where had the stern leader of men gone? Exactly when had he metamorphosed into this temptingly, sinful lump of a man?_

_It wasn’t fair!_

“This is rather more about how heavy you are Lannister, not how strong.” She felt obliged to point out.

“That’s what you say Tarth,” Jaime rolled her name around his mouth like it was a titbit he wanted to savour, “Are you calling me fat?”

 _Gods no!_ Lean hips and a hard torso nestled between her legs were clear evidence that whatever else Jaime Lannister might be, fat was not it.

Brienne took a deep breath and tried one final offensive, her hands gripping the muscles of his forearms as she attempted to flip him onto his back, but she got nowhere. Still Jaime lay on top of her like a dead weight, gazing down at her face with a fiendish light in his eye.

“Yield,” he told her.

“I will not,” she told him.

“Oh go on, yield you stubborn wench,” he growled, “because we have to talk, and I need to be able to concentrate.”

Brienne’s heart sank a little.

 _Here it comes_ , Brienne thought, despite all her effort to keep talk about them to a minimum, effort that Jaime had seemed to think it necessary to undermine at every opportunity _. So what would he have to say? Brienne, we need to discuss your presence, it is causing difficulties; people are asking questions, I need to send you back to…._

 “I will talk to Pod tomorrow and see if there is anything suitable on his side of the camp,” she told him. Brienne had known she would have to move from the Lannister pavilion at some point, but there was no denying the fact that she felt so much safer when sleeping near to Jaime.

_How could I ever have foreseen that being the way of things?_

_Cold nights, sleeping on the ground, fearing the worst, seem worlds away from this tent with the Kingslayer snoring gently in the next bed._

“What are you pontificating about now?” Jaime’s face showed genuine bafflement as Brienne struggled to sit up. “I am talking about your request.”

Brienne flopped back down again.

“My request?” it was her turn to look confused.

“Your request… how did it go? Basically something like, ‘ _Jaime, I know men have ways of dealing with their needs_ ’,” Jaime Lannister raised his eyebrows, “remember that conversation? I certainly do.”

“I did not say that… I mean, I did not mean that!”

 _Gods, the man was beyond enough_!

Jaime expression turned thoughtful, “I have an excellent memory you know,” he informed her, “I think it came from finding it difficult to read as a child. I distinctly remember something about making you want something you didn’t understand, making you experience certain feelings that would not go away when you would think of me?”

“I surely did not say that!” she told him hotly.

“As good as,” he insisted.

“I… no… anyhow I had had too much of your wine.” She told him, adding with fierce emphasis, “And what is more it was by your own admission drugged wine.”

“Not drugged, medicinal,” Jaime corrected her swiftly.

Brienne could feel a flush of monumental proportions starting to flood her neck and face, “I was tired, not well, in pain, and… well, pleased to see you.” She told him.

“Obviously you were very pleased to see me.”

“Jaime!” Brienne went to push him off her again, this time driven by the fury of embarrassment and shame. It gave her an additional strength that very nearly threw Jaime from the bed, but Jaime Lannister had not survived his life by playing fair.

When it looked like she would finally succeed in hurling him from where he lay, Jaime simply slid his hand beneath her shirt, and poked her bruised ribs.

“Ouch!” Brienne shrieked, her hands instantly dropping to her sides to protect herself, betrayed by such a knave’s trick.

“Whoops,” Jaime grinned, “my hand slipped.”

She lay frozen, her mouth open.

“So, our arrangement…”

“There is nothing to be discussed,” she croaked, her skin still burning where his hand had swept casually over her, the sorely provoked bruises throbbing where he had used them against her.

“But…”

“Shut. Up.” Brienne was taking deep breaths, or at least as deep as she could manage with Jaime Lannister still lying on top of her. “Or I’ll….”

“What?” Jaime stared down at her, cocky, confident and supremely in control, “you’ll do what?”

Brienne stared at him, dumbfounded. Realising she was as vulnerable as it was possible to be. Was there truly nothing she could do?

_Nothing?_

Suddenly her heart started to race and her skin felt hot. _Don’t panic,_ she told herself.

 _Don’t panic its only Jaime,_  but her fight reflex was not listening.

On instinct alone, her hand shot out for the knife by her bed, the one used to trim the candles. But Jaime countered it just as quickly with his left, grabbing her wrist before her hand could make contact with the weapon.

For a moment they didn’t move. “Don’t be so bloody stupid,” he growled at her, his green eyes blazing down at her as if lit by wildfire, “It’s me. I’ll not harm you Brienne… I’d sooner hurt myself.”

He released her wrist, his eyes flicking over the skin there before turning his attention back to her face.

Brienne stared into his eyes for what seemed like an age, before swallowing.

“I know that,” she nodded, making a conscious effort to relax once more just as Jaime ducked his head down so his cheek brushed hers

“I’m sorry,” Jaime whispered against her ear, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

With a shaky snort of disbelief Brienne turned her face away from him. “You do know you are squashing me,” she told him.

“Am I?” She didn’t know quite how he managed to achieve it, but he hooked his legs around hers and rolled them over so that she was on top, all the more annoying for it being exactly what she had failed to do previously. “Better?”

Brienne found herself staring down into his green eyes, his fair hair curling away from his handsome face to settle about his ears and head as if arranged there.

_Ye gods but this man is some piece of work. He always seems so bloody composed._

_Does nothing faze him?_ Brienne thought to herself, envious of his easy self-assurance.

“Jaime, did you really hit Ronnet Connington because he insulted me?”

For a moment it looked like she might almost have unsettled him, but only a moment.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, the usual, soldiers talking in camp,” Brienne told him.

“Ah soldiers, how they do love their gossip.” He sighed. “I did come across Connington at Harrenhal, in the bear pit. You do remember the bear pit?”

Brienne could not bring herself to do anything other than roll her eyes.

“Ser Ronnet Connington was in a very talkative, if annoying, mood that evening. I waited, of course, until he told me all about your betrothal.” Jaime did not have to grin, didn’t have to pull a face. One raised eyebrow was enough to tell Brienne just how fascinated he had been by the subject.

Brienne winced. She wriggled her hips to see how loose his hold was in case the conversation took a bad turn, and instead rubbed against some very hard evidence of his arousal. Suddenly shy and a not little shocked, Brienne looked at the man beneath her for any sign of discomposure but Jaime seemed completely at ease and still focused on their conversation about Connington.  

“You never told me,” his voice was suddenly serious, raw.

“Told you about what?”

“Anything at all about your betrothals, how many? Three, I believe Connington said.”

“What was there to tell?” she shrugged, “I’m ugly, mannish, too big and left my father few options about securing the bloodline. Even the Evenstar of Tarth found his ugly heir too much of a challenge to settle.”

Jaime was silent as he stared at her for a moment, as if seeing her for the very first time. Self-consciously her hand went to the wound on her face to shield it from his gaze.

“Brie-,”

Crash! Both of them jumped at the noise.

“Oh, sorry Ser Jaime!” it was Lew coming to put out Jaime’s pitcher of water for his morning wash and dropping his tray. Dawn had crept up on the pair of them, the half-light of a new day clear to see behind Lew as he walked into the tent. “I didn’t mean to disturb… Sorry Ser Jaime!”

“No matter,” Jaime sat up as Brienne disentangled herself with as much dignity as she could muster and moved to the foot of the bed, “Lady Brienne and I were attempting to discuss a matter that we did not want to be heard by all and sundry in the quiet of the morning. We didn’t mean to shock you.”

“Of course not Ser,” Lew smiled, obviously another lad completely under the spell of the Kingslayer. Brienne rolled her eyes and pulled a face at Jaime who simply rose from the bed, stretched and was all Ser Jaime Lannister once more. As he started to talk to his squire about what he needed for the day ahead, Brienne realised he never had told her exactly  _why_  he had hit Red Ronnet after all.

“Oh, by the way, Brienne,” when Jaime was dressed and finally looked ready to leave the tent, he paused and turned to face her, his expression carefully neutral, “my answer to your request is a definite yes, I look forward to us exploring the matter we discussed further,” suddenly he grinned, a wide boyish display, all teeth and dare, “…much further.” And then with that, the Lannister Lion with his golden locks and green eyes was gone.

All Brienne felt was her jaw drop and her mouth fall open.

 


	6. Half a Lion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Jaime is reminded about his responsibility to the family…

Brienne was watching Podrick practice under the strict supervision of Ser Kennos of Kayce, her face a picture of wistfulness as Kayce kept stopping Pod, to correct his stance or the grip of his sword hand, as they worked.

“Not tempted to step in?” Jaime asked her coming to a stop beside her as she stood silently following the two figures as they thrust, parried and lunged their way back and forth across the practice field.

“No, because of my broken arm… or more accurately my now mended arm…,” she amended glumly; “I would but its weaker than I'm used to. I need to practice but it still gets tired and aches a lot, along with my ribs, so…”

“So, see the maester,” he told her, turning away from Brienne to survey the camp, his experienced eye noticing the condition of the ground, his men, the state of the place. His cousin Ser Daven Lannister was due later, stopping off on his way back to Casterley Rock and his duties as Warden of the West. It made Jaime feel restless, his men were well enough for the time being, but maybe it was time to move on, to turn west towards the Rock, or south for a return to Kings Landing and King Tommen. Law and order were returning slowly to the Riverlands now that he had done his best to resolve the issues surrounding who would wield the sword of leadership and justice in this rain soaked place. He could not help but wonder how much busier Daven’s two score men at arms, archers and half a dozen knights were going to make it.

“I saw the maester,” Brienne grumbled, “it was he who said that I should rest my arm _completely_ to give it a better chance to heal well. All I know is while I am so _completely_ not doing anything of use all my other body parts are going to seed.”

Jaime’s attention wandered from Brienne’s words as he studied her, thinking that she looked as fit and strong as ever. Brienne continued to glance longingly at the training field, unaware of his eyes upon her.

“There are other ways to exercise Brienne,” he told her absently.

“I have ridden out with two patrols already this morning,” Brienne informed him tartly.

“Well that’s excellent,” Jaime turned to face her, adding, “but I was not talking about riding out… precisely.”

Brienne turned to face him, her plain features almost a scowl, her bluer than blue eyes wary, “then exactly what did you mean Ser Jaime?” she asked him suspiciously.

Jaime regarded her for a moment, wondering when exactly had it happened? When had staring at her scarred face and straw-stack hair managed to clear every lucid thought from his mind so completely?

 He gave a wry grin as he thought it might prove prudent to make a note somewhere to _never_ allow the Maid of Tarth to sit with him at a negotiating table, or stand with him when debating at a council of war. Although he could think of none he would rather…

“Oh, by the gods, you mean… that,” Brienne rolled her eyes, obviously coming to her own conclusion regarding his comment and what he meant.

It took a minute for even Jaime’s quick wits to catch up.

“That?” _Oh yes, of course, that,_ Jaime could feel the grin starting to stretch his lips before he’d even registered the change in expression on Brienne’s. “Ye gods Brienne, your wicked mind puts even mine to shame!”

_Their arrangement!_

“Honestly,” Brienne’s eyes flashed as she shook her head,” to think that the most suitable words to describe the Kingslayer could ever be _infantile and childish_!”

“I would not describe my thoughts regarding our arrangement as in any way infantile or childish,” Jaime replied, shooting her a look of his own that was sufficient to make the Maid of Tarth’s face flush almost as red as her borrowed Lannister cloak, “on the contrary, the term adult would definitely seem to apply.”

“We can’t discuss it here!” Brienne croaked, her eyes darting to where Pod held his practice sword high in the air as he demonstrated to the knights present how he would attempt to parry an attack. The clash of steel rang out as Pod attempted to run through his fighting moves with the fleet footed Kayce.

“I can think of no better place to discuss such matters,” he murmured in her ear, “I am all too aware of just how quiet it is when we talk in bed.” He scanned the camp once more.

“Beds,” Brienne hissed at him furiously, glancing around them as if expecting eavesdroppers to be creeping up on them even as they stood in the middle of the Lannister encampment, “beds Jaime, for the love of the seven!”

“I’m more than happy to try them both,” Jaime responded, nodding genially at two knights as they walked past on their way back from the lists, “one may be better than the other for what I have in mind.”

“Jaime!” Brienne huffed desperately, her eyes wide.

“Why?” Jaime turned to face her once more, his voice sharper than he had intended, “have you changed your mind?”

Brienne stared at him long and hard, her blue eyes full of longing and something else he found it almost impossible to discern.

_Desperation?_

She shook her head.

“No,” Brienne finally said, as if finally admitting something to herself, her voice a reluctant whisper, “no, Jaime...  I haven’t… I haven’t changed my mind.”

Good,” Jaime was at a loss to address the surge of delight that gripped him at her words, and _gods, the relief!_ “Then why are we arguing?”

“I… I…” she shrugged, jumping slightly at the sound of clashing steel and shouts as Pod finally managed to land a hit.

“Stop overthinking things,” Jaime growled at her, bemused that a woman who thought nothing of fighting the Bloody Mummers and battling a bear with a blunt edged tourney sword could be made as nervous as a cat by him talking about taking her to bed.

“I’m trying not to think about it at all,”

“It’s actually enjoyable Brienne. People do it because it’s actually…”

_What? With Cersei it always felt dangerous, exciting, confusing, forbidden, and all-consuming._

_But also… rushed, addictive, wrong?_

“Nice?”  Brienne finished with an almost hopeful note in her voice, reaching up to brush a lock of spiky blonde hair away from her cheek; she left a smear of mud in the wake of her hand.

Jaime was aware of a sudden urge to run his thumb along the line of her jaw to wipe the mud from her skin. He had to fold his arms to prevent himself from reaching out to do precisely that.

_Damn being in the middle of a field of Lannister soldiers._

“Wonderful,” he said instead, softly, for her ears alone, “it will be at least that!”

“So modest, Ser Jaime?” she observed, not without humour, in her long suffering way.

Jaime could not suppress his snort of laughter.

The reality was that he had only ever lain with one woman and that woman was Cersei Lannister, his own sister. He promised Brienne great things, but his experience for a man his age was unbelievably limited. In reality it would be something of an adventure for both of them, “I would say hopeful, rather than modest, Wench,” he grinned.

The day was drawing to a close, and it seemed perfectly natural for the two of them to fall into conversation as they walked slowly together back to the Lannister Pavilion, although for Jaime their pleasant sojourn was somewhat spoilt by Brienne insisting that they visit Thoros on their way back.

“No” said Jaime

“Yes,” argued Brienne, “Jaime, when I was alone with the Brotherhood, Thoros ensured I had food even if Stoneheart had her own ideas as to what my fate should be. The least I can do is to ensure that the care I received is reciprocated and that you are treating him properly.”

“I am treating him far better than he probably deserves,” Jaime told her darkly.

“Then you will not mind if I visit with him on our way back to the tent,” Brienne replied, “will you? You can always go on without me.”

_Not if you are going to talk to the red priest of Myr after I have left you,_ he thought.

“No, no,” Jaime smiled, “I am always happy to discuss prisoner welfare. Having spent a year in a muddy pen wrapped in chains I always feel I have much to contribute to that kind of talk.”

 

 

“So, what are you going to do with the red priest then, Jaime?” Ser Daven Lannister helped himself to another goblet of wine and lounged back in his chair. “Thoros seems mighty content to sit in his chains, eat his regular meals, and wait. He’s not as fat as he was, but he seems just as shifty.”

“And what do you think he waits for?” Jaime asked him genuinely interested in what his lifelong friend thought of Thoros of Myr’s motives.

“I do not pretend to even have a clue what goes through that man’s mind,” Daven Lannister shrugged, “I never have. Do you remember him at the Pyke?”

_Gods, I wish I did not,_ Jaime thought, remembering his warning to Thoros regarding Brienne. The priest seemed content to let Brienne talk to him when they saw him, but Jaime could not help feeling that Thoros was planning something. The way the red priest watched Brienne, watched him, had every instinct he possessed sounding an alarm.

As he mused over the day’s events, a small disturbance broke out to his right as the Lady Brienne arrived at the table.

“No my Lady…”

“But I usually sit at the end there,” Brienne was arguing with Peck, who to give the lad full credit was remaining remarkably obdurate in the face of a scowling, red-faced Maid of Tarth.

“Ser Jaime has instructed me to sit you on his right,” Peck stood with his arms out flung, looking like a signpost at a crossroads leaving her only one path to the table, and one possible chair.

The chair on Jaime’s right at the head of the table. A position normally kept for an honoured guest, or indeed a knight’s lady, should she be present.

“Come Lady Brienne,” Jaime grinned at her, enjoying the sight of Brienne caught in the dilemma between wanting to sit well away from him and her hard learnt manners which demanded she should not cause a fuss, particularly when her high ranking host was standing to move the chair back from the table in a clear invitation that she should join him, “I am waiting on you sitting next to me before I eat.”

Brienne went beet red, grimacing at the faces of people already sat at the table turning to see who Ser Jaime Lannister was addressing in his most persuasive of tones.

“Please,” Jaime dusted off the seat with his left hand and then gave it an encouraging rattle as he seized the back, “I’m so very hungry Lady Brienne, and it is cruel of you to keep me waiting, but I will... for as long as it takes.” he added in a low undertone.

Brienne studied him for a moment, and then with one final look about the table, lingering on the vacant chair at the bottom for the merest moment, she ducked her head and walked over to Jaime’s side before sitting reluctantly in the chair next to him.

She scowled so fiercely at Peck as he came to fill her cup with wine that the boy’s hand shook as if with the ague and it was Jaime who had to assume responsibility for the filling of the thing, waving the grateful Peck away from the Maid of Tarth’s side.

“I don’t want to sit here,” she murmured under her breath at him.

“Why ever not?” he asked her, “Have I offended you Milady?”

“No,” She looked up, indignant, and suddenly Jaime found himself staring into her blue eyes, trapped by her gaze.

“I…” he had a witty response already primed and ready to be said in his mind.

Or he did have.

_I did_ , Jaime thought, _but by the seven, one serious look from those astonishing eyes seems enough to promptly suck all words right out of my head._

“I…,” Ser Jaime tried again, but he found himself speechless and helpless. Jaime looked across at Ser Daven Lannister who sat on his left, and managed to utter, “Ah… well good.”

Then Jaime felt a most unfamiliar sensation creeping around his throat and up onto his cheeks as a flush swept over his face, Daven meanwhile studied him in a most perplexed manner.

“Coz?” he asked Jaime, “Are you well?”

Instantly Brienne’s attention was focused on Jaime, the concern in Daven’s voice resulting in her studying him so closely that the flush became even hotter and Jaime lifted a finger to the collar of his gambeson, pulling at it to give him a little more cold air on his skin.

“I am fine,” Jaime replied firmly, reaching out with his left hand to secure the bottle of wine so that he could fill his own wine cup. At least he could blame his heightened complexion on the wine should he drink it, rather than the tow-headed wench who sat beside him, staring at his face as if he was some maester’s specimen.

“Are you sure?” Brienne asked him, frowning, ocean blue eyes peeking out from between the locks of a preposterous shock of straw-like hair, “Do you need anything?”

_You,_ he thought _, always you._

“I need you to eat your food,” he said instead, smiling politely at her, “so I can start mine, Milady. I am famished. Watching Pod practice his fighting is hungry work, indeed, it may have left me feeling a trifle faint.”

This time it was Brienne’s turn to flush, “Sorry Jaime.”

She instantly ducked her head down and focused on her plate, taking a piece of bread gingerly offered by Lew and some meat from a trencher, “I didn’t mean to cause quite that much fuss over something as stupid as where I should sit at dinner.”

Jaime watched her bowed head for a moment, trying to analyse just why he felt quite as guilty as he did for making her feel bad, when she shyly glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye, catching him staring at her. He swore under his breath, damning the slow flush he could feel once more spreading from his neck to cover his entire face.

For the second time that evening, Jaime felt the need to clear his throat. Coughing he took a deep draught of wine from his cup and then proceeded to add a modest portion of food to his own plate only to glance up and on this occasion find Ser Daven’s lively hazel eyes watching him.

“A soldier’s life appears to agree with you coz,” he raised his brows and grinned through his beard, “or is it the company?”

“I have always felt more comfortable out with my men in the field than I have ever felt at court Daven and I have never made any secret of that fact.” Jaime told him.

“Just the men?” Daven raised his brows but kept his voice low as he spoke, his eyes on Brienne as he did so, “I’ve heard tell of quite a fanciful tale… a tale that has you sharing a tent with the Maid of Tarth. Is it true?”

Jaime glared at him in an effort to get Ser Daven to lower his voice even further, before glancing at Brienne and then back at his cousin. Daven considered him for a moment before raising his brows slightly, “Oh, so it’s like that then.”

Having no idea what Daven had seen in his eyes, Jaime could only assume his every glance was showing something of his emotions to those that knew him well.

“It’s nothing,” Jaime muttered.

“Are you fucking her?”

“Coz,” Jaime laughed uneasily, “just because I share a living space with a woman does not mean I’m…” he shrugged and looked at Brienne who frowned at him, obviously unable to hear a word they were saying over the noise of almost thirty other diners at the table.

Daven moved his head closer to Jaime's.

“So you are not?”

“No.”

“Has she expectations of you?”

“Daven, I am the one handed man of the Kingsguard, a notorious slayer of kings and breaker of oaths. The Lannister house has been ravaged by war and weakened by debt…what can I offer a young woman such as her?  I am but half a lion,” Jaime waved his golden hand in the air, “and with one less paw than he should have.”

“But you are _the_ lion, Jaime.” Daven argued, “Gods, look at you. You think she’s not interested? More likely she can’t believe her luck, hand or no!”

He threw his head back and laughed loudly, earning a black scowl from Brienne who had obviously decided Ser Daven Lannister had drunk too much.

“She is… no Light of the West,” Daven finished weakly, unable to hold Brienne’s disapproving gaze for long before he looked away.

“No she is not,” Jaime replied, “thank the gods. And neither is she a stoat.” The memory of Daven’s description of his intended Frey wife still made Jaime smile.

“No, certainly no stoat. I have, however, heard her likened her to a cow.”

_That sounds a lot like Cersei,_ thought Jaime.

“She fights like a lion,” Jaime said, studying Brienne as she discussed Pod’s progress with a knight sitting next to her at the table, “and she has the courage of ten lions.”

“Lady Brienne of Tarth has never claimed to be a beauty, but she is of damn good stock Jaime. Should you be so inclined, you could beget a whole army of formidable lion cubs with that one.”

“You talk of her as if she is a brood mare, cousin.” Jaime replied, shifting self-consciously in his seat.

“You are not getting any younger Jaime and you are by rights, the head of our house.”

“I do not need to be reminded of that fact,” Jaime grimaced, “particularly by you.”

“So, are you going to fuck her?” Daven grinned, “for if you do, you’d better make sure she wants you as she looks more than able to break you in half and dump you in the river, cousin!”

“Daven, you do not fuck a lady,” Jaime frowned at him as he spoke, before smiling, eyebrows raised, “however seduction… now that is a completely different matter entirely.”


	7. Deep Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Brienne understands why they might need a map table in the tent…  
> All characters are owned by GRRM

Brienne was riding out with her first patrol of the morning, her gaze alternating between the badly overgrown edge of the path on one side and the river in full torrent on the other. The colder weather and the perpetual rains had made the Riverlands a far more miserable place than she had remembered from her previous travels, and the river with its angry, turbulent waters was a constant reminder of the changes to the place. Up ahead, two men at arms were beating the bushes closest to the path with long sticks in advance of the patrol, the general thinking being that it made an ambush less probable.

 _Unlikely_ , thought Brienne, but the knights accompanying her could not be persuaded otherwise so she just let them get on with it.

Despite the constant noise from the river and the shouts of the men, Brienne actually heard very little as her thoughts were focused inwards, ruminating on thoughts of Jaime due to bid farewell to his cousin Daven that morning. His cousin was heading west upon his departure, and there was no mistaking the faraway look in Jaime’s eyes when Ser Daven Lannister talked about resuming his journey. Jaime was obviously feeling restless now that his work in the Riverlands was almost done.

_He was probably already thinking of returning to Kings Landing and Cersei once more._

_So what of me?_ Thought Brienne anxiously, _where will there be for me to go?_

The thought of trailing hopelessly after Jaime, only to watch him resume his intense relationship with Cersei made her feel that anything would be preferable to that.

Worse still, along with Ser Daven Lannister’s arrival in camp materialized wild whispers about her island, about Tarth, and rumours that had filled her with dread. As yet they were unconfirmed by anyone who might actually know anything, but the nature of them suggested it was only a matter of time before Brienne of Tarth knew for sure. In addition to that, she was at a loss as to what she should do about Sansa, her promise to Catelyn Stark still haunted her, even after the awful encounter with Stoneheart, the Brotherhood without Banners and her betrayal of Jaime.

 _Jaime,_ Brienne sighed miserably _, a future without Jaime would be….._

“Boar!” screamed a male voice.

A shout of alarm from the men beating the undergrowth ahead alerted the patrol only just in time to an almighty squeal, as a monstrous creature erupted from bushes heading straight for the horses.

It was huge animal, equipped with a massive pair of tusks. Not that Brienne had much time to register its magnificence as it charged straight for the patrol, ten men and horses scattering in all directions as it attacked.

Her horse reared out of the way of the creature the first time it came her way, but then as it turned sharply to attack again, Brienne found herself trapped between the river and the wild boar. As it charged, her horse gallantly attempted to get out of the way once more, but on this occasion their luck was out and as her mount stumbled back onto the sodden, undermined riverbank, it crumbled beneath the weight and both of them fell backwards into the churning water.

Brienne was aware of not falling exactly, but sliding ignominiously into the water over the rump of her mount as the ground gave way beneath her horse’s hooves and the raging torrent caught hold.

She hit the deep running water with a modest splash, her horse landing on its side alongside her, but no sooner had she done so the freezing cold river water seeped under the plate of her armour and took her breath away. She scrabbled to catch a handhold on the branches and roots that dipped into the current, one came away in her hand, but the second seemed to hold firm. Her horse was not so fortunate, and was swept into the middle of the river where wild eyed, nostrils flaring it was borne away, tail first, by the body of water cascading downstream. In that brief moment, Brienne realised that despite her excellent swimming skills, she would be no match for this river in full flood.

It was her bad arm that had her currently moored to the riverbank, and it hurt like the very devil but as she held on for dear life it soon became apparent that was not her biggest problem.

 _I’m sinking,_ she suddenly realised.

The weight of her armour was slowly pulling her down as she became waterlogged. Brienne briefly considered trying to remove at least the breastplate, but if she let go of the root she would be swept away.

“Help me,” she called, aware of sounding panicked, “somebody help me.”

The noises from the bank made it obvious that her companions were still endeavouring to deal with the boar.

Teeth chattering, Brienne squeezed her eyes shut against the sensation that her life was about to flash before her eyes.

_Oathkeeper, the fight against Stoneheart, the bear, Jaime naked in the baths at Harrenhal …._

“Shit!” She heard someone shout.

“Fucking get her,” came another shout, “or you can tell the Kingslayer you lost his…”

Whatever else was said was mercifully lost as she was knocked on the side of her head by the branches of a particularly large tree that was being swept away downstream. But she held firm, her ribs starting to ache with the freezing cold temperatures now surrounding her, her hands rapidly losing all sensation.

Brienne caught sight of a figure waving frantically.

Pod was shouting at her from slightly further down the river, he was wading through what looked like muddy shallows, waving a massive stick at her.

“Let go,” he was shouting at her, “catch this as you come past.”

_Oathkeeper, the fight against Stoneheart, the bear, Jaime naked in the baths at Harrenhal …._

“I’ll sink,” she cried, her voice hoarse, sure that if she released her hold on the root she had hold of she would simply sink underwater and be borne away just as her horse was. Brienne could feel the current tugging at her legs, encircling her body and pulling at her clothing.

_I can’t feel my hands… I can’t catch anything… I can drown slowly here trying not to die, or drown a little faster over there trying to live…_

She released her hold on the root and let the current take her, and sure enough she gradually started to sink, but with a deep breath and a desperate kick from her legs Brienne managed to launch herself in the direction of Pod’s branch and get at least some of her arms round it.

Pod went to grab her but missed, and then a larger hand appeared over Pod’s shoulder to seize the neck of her gambeson, hauling her from the river and through the mud to safety like a half drowned dog. Ser Lyle Crakehall, the Strongboar, stared down at her as she lay in the mud, an inscrutable look on his face.

“Are you well Milady?” he asked her incongruously, as she rolled over to lie on her back and stare at the sky.

“Yes,” was all she could manage, and with an unsympathetic grunt Ser Lyle walked away, leaving her to crawl through the mud and back onto the path once more.

“My poor horse,” she said softly.

“You can ride my horse Milady,” Pod offered, but Brienne shook her head, Pod was also dripping water on the ground having got soaked to the skin when he waded in to try and pull her to safety.

“I’ll walk,” she told him; well aware that Pod’s smaller mount would struggle to carry her, her sodden clothes and her armour. The memory of her own horse being borne away by the current made her unable to stop shivering.

 _It could have been me,_ she thought _, I don’t deserve another poor creature in its stead._

“Do you want me to remove your armour, Milady?” Pod asked.

Again she shook her head, “No, I’ll wear it back Pod.” She told him.

_I didn’t shed it in the river, I’m not about to take it off now._

Slowly she hauled herself to her feet and prepared to walk back to the camp with the rest of the patrol. As she fell in with the men at arms, she became aware of whispers and muttering breaking out around her.

“Mud beast,” she heard someone snigger.

“Dirty bitch, more-like,” someone else corrected them.

The voices fell silent as Strongboar reined in his mount to fall into step beside Brienne.

“I’ll send a message back to camp,” Ser Lyle told her, “has your squire at least offered you his mount?”

Nodding, Brienne kept her face impassive and kept walking, ignoring the chafing of wet material around her armpits and hips where her clothes rubbed against her breastplate, boots squelching with every step.

And as soon as Strongboar was gone, she also ignored the murmurs that started once more.

 

By the time they reached the Lannister camp, most of the men were openly laughing at her, but Brienne bore it stoically as she supposed she did look like some kind of monster covered from head to toe in mud.

Suddenly all the laughter stopped, and the men round her fell silent as Ser Jaime Lannister walked towards them, accompanied by his cousin, Ser Daven, the same cousin who was supposed to have left for the West earlier that day.

Jaime’s face was inscrutable, expressionless as he looked her up and down.

“Where’s her horse?” he asked bluntly.

“Lost,” Ser Lyle told him as he dismounted, “we were attacked by a wild pig and Milady’s horse… fell into the river.”

“Careless,” Daven observed to Ser Lyle, making Strongboar flush slightly despite his already healthy colour.

Jaime was busy studying the patrol standing before him, clearly looking at the condition of their clothes and boots before casting his gaze over the state of Brienne and Pod.

“Sorry Ser Lyle, what I actually meant was,” Jaime Lannister rested his left hand on the hilt of the sword at his side, his voice quiet but the onlookers even more so, “why is the Maid of Tarth on foot?”

There was an awkward, lingering pause before Brienne wiped the mud from her face with a weary hand and said, “It was me, I… decided to walk,” she answered him, “to keep warm.”

She was not about to cause trouble for either Ser Lyle or Pod, the former having dragged her bodily from the river saving her life, and the latter being wetter and more exhausted than she due to his heroic efforts with the stick. Jaime had obviously already deduced for himself who had been involved with her rescue, and was content to leave those who were not to wonder what he might do to show his displeasure.

Jaime considered her for a moment, green eyes like chips of jade, and then gave a brief nod.

“Are you returning to the tent?”

Brienne became all too aware of all eyes being upon her, watching, judging, and she found herself not wanting to be escorted in quite such a public fashion.

 _Dirty bitch more like_ , the words were still ringing in her ears, and she blushed red with the memory.

“Let me attend to…” She could get most of the dirt off with rags before she trailed it into the Lannister Pavilion if he just gave her a moment.

“Surely you are not going to say the horses?” Jaime’s expression was almost comical in its incredulity as he cut across her, “You are soaking wet, covered in mud and your horse is gone, Lady Brienne.”

She had meant to say the worst of the muck, but his anger immediately made her feel guilty about the loss of her mount.

“I’m so sorry,” Brienne started to apologise, “it was an accident, and I did my best to avoid the boar as it charged, but the riverbank…”

“I have heard the story, Milady, twice.”

Ser Jaime Lannister was clearly angry about something, was it the loss of the horse? Brienne studied him closely. Jaime never had been one who tended to a red faced blustering sort of anger, if anything he became quieter, paler, his voice and tone sharper.

“I will find coin for the horse,” she finally said.

Ser Daven suddenly experienced a nasty coughing fit, which earned him a look of passing irritation from Jaime before his eyes locked onto her again.

“You do not have to pay for the bloody horse,” Jaime replied, his voice sharper and harsher than ever.

Brienne registered his reaction to her offer, and his angry refusal, trying to deduce why he was still in such a temper if the loss of a valuable beast was not the reason.

 _By the gods, Jaime Lannister you are such a contrary creature at times_ , she silently huffed, exasperated at her failure to pacify him.

But Jaime was now walking towards her, his jaw rigid, his step determined.

“I will escort you to the tent,” he said finally, “and then I will call the maester.”

“I do not need the maester, Ser Jaime,” argued Brienne, rolling her eyes and scowling fiercely, her day feeling as if it was careering from very bad to even worse. How many times was she going to have to have this argument with him over whether she could judge the state of her own health or not ? 

_A clean, dry set of underclothes would be of far more benefit right now._

“Pod, fetch the maester,” Jaime told her squire, his eyes not leaving Brienne.

“Ser Jaime,” she finally said, aware of every eye in the place finally on them and their stupid conversation, “I am fine.”

But then she realised, Jaime was clearly not.

Brienne saw that in his closed expression, his clenched jaw with the bunched muscle that flexed even when he didn’t speak. It would seem she had upset him, not by losing the horse, but in some other way.

The one thing that was obvious to Brienne was that Jaime was determined to get his way on this.

“Once I have cleaned the worst of the mud...”

“Now,” he insisted. Jaime raised his head and stared directly at her in what amounted to a clear challenge. He had a look in his eye that suggested that if she didn’t go with him of her own choice, now, he would somehow force her compliance.

_He surely wouldn’t command his men to take her to the Lannister tent?_

No, Jaime wouldn’t do that, but he did have an air about him that suggested he was about to do something unexpected. Jaime took a purposeful step towards her, looking as if he was about to grab her.

_Ye gods, surely he wasn’t going to try to put her over his shoulder…_

Brienne only had to hold his vibrant emerald gaze for the merest moment before she knew.

_He damn well thought he could!_

 “I… alright, I’m coming,” Brienne acquiesced hurriedly, only too aware of how that would look to the assembled men, “now.”

She glared at Jaime as she squelched past him, receiving only a tight smile of acknowledgment as she passed.

Jaime stood back to allow Brienne to go first, clearly indicating that the Maid of Tarth should lead the way and so it was that they trudged all the way back to the Lannister pavilion. As she went, she was very conscious of being openly stared at as their strange procession made its way through the camp towards the Lannister banners and tent.

 _The Kingslayer and the mud-monster_ , Brienne thought as she finally walked into the Pavilion and sat without being asked to on a stool by the entrance.

She started pulling on the ties and buckles of her armour, Pod having been sent by Jaime to get the maester, Pia and Peck having been scattered to the winds on various errands leaving Jaime watching her from just inside the tent.

Lew walked in with a pitcher of water and a cloth.

“Undo these and then go and find the bathtub,” Jaime growled pointing at the buckles on his armour.

Lew hurried to deftly unbuckle Jaime’s breastplate, looking towards Brienne once he had finished. She shook her head, grateful for the excuse that undoing the ties gave her to avoid Jaime’s gaze.

“Now get out,” Jaime told him.

Brienne stared at Jaime with an exasperated look as Lew fled, “Only the seven know why they all remain so ridiculously devoted to you when you snap, snarl and roar at them all the time,” she told him crossly, starting to shiver as the cold and the shock of the days exploits took hold.

“It’s expected of me,” he told her, deftly undoing the sword belt that had been slung low on his hip before taking her armoured breastplate from her with his left hand, and setting it on the floor.

“Is it really?” it was difficult to keep her tone light to match his. The space they were in suddenly seemed very small and Jaime seemed far too close, and although she was still clad in a soaking wet gambeson and underclothes, with the way he was looking at her now, it felt like she wasn’t wearing much of anything at all.

“Here let me help you with those,” Jaime had already removed his own gambeson and was loosening his neckcloth and the ties on his shirt while she stood there wondering dumbly which river Jaime had fallen into that meant he had to shed his clothes as well.

Brienne let her hands drop as he set about undoing the laces at her neck far more effectively with one hand than she had managed with two.

“Damn Brienne, I thought I had lost you today,” Jaime frowned at her, his eyes green and fathomless before he made a complicated noise, a cross somewhere between a growl and a sigh. It was then that he pulled her fully against him, his left hand sliding down her back to seize a handful of the padded gambeson to pull her as close as he could possibly get her, his mouth sliding along the line of her jaw to stop near her ear, “I thought I had lost you.”

“I lost my horse,” Brienne could not help mumbling, feeling awful.

“Fuck the bloody horse Brienne,” he snarled, his hand coming up to hold her chin, to make her look him in the eye, “I can replace a horse, what I can’t do is replace you.” With that he found her mouth with his and kissed her, hard.

Stunned, Brienne simply stood there, unable to quite comprehend the fact that Jaime was peppering her mud streaked face with kisses, although now he seemed more than happy to focus completely on her mouth.

_That he seemed to want to, that he seemed unable to stop._

The sensation of his mouth on hers made her head swim; his tongue traced its contours, asking, then persuading her to part her still cold lips. All she had to do was gasp at the sensation and he took advantage, deepening the kiss until he was inside her mouth, releasing her chin and moving his hand to the back of her head, his fingers threaded into her short hair.

_Her very muddy hair!_

“Jaime… you can’t want… I’m filthy,” she finally protested as he released her lips, tipping her head back so he could move his mouth down to caress her neck and jaw.

“I don’t care,” with those words Jaime stopped kissing her, returning his attention to the lacing at the front of the soaked gambeson and the shirt underneath, unpicking the laces with surprising speed before pulling the lot over her head. Brienne made a token gesture of objection at which he looked at her enquiringly, “Really? You want to keep the wet clothes on?”

“Well, no,” she protested, so off it came, in one wet lump.

The shock of the cold air on her damp skin made her pull in a sharp breath, her arms coming up to cover her chest, hands tucked into her armpits, goosebumps and freckles fighting for space over her pale skin.

“Gods, Brienne,” he sighed gently against her shoulder, nuzzling and kissing her once more. The feeling of Jaime rubbing his whiskered cheek against her skin as he moved up to cover her face with kisses made Brienne’s legs buckle. The sensations he unleashed in her making her poor body droop downwards in response to the momentum of her knees giving way, dragging them both backwards onto the map table. Its edge caught Brienne underneath the buttocks, sending her sprawling back with Jaime tumbling after her, her head landing on a pile of official missives from the lords of the Riverlands.

“Jaime, you’re ruining the…” she struggled to sit up, but a firm hand remained on her hip bunched into the damp material of her trousers as Jaime swept the rest of the table’s contents onto the floor with his right arm. He then pulled her back towards him, flicking the ties at the waist of her trousers undone so that they gaped open to reveal her flat muscular stomach, and even more freckles.

Jaime stopped, propping himself up on his one hand, staring at her stomach as if he could not quite believe what he was looking at. With a brief laugh, he ducked his head down and traced a line down the middle of her abdomen with his tongue before glancing up at her through his unruly locks, green eyes alight with mischief, “So then Brienne of Tarth, how far are we going to take this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might need to change my rating yet again at some point...


	8. What might be yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Jaime wonders …  
> All characters are owned by GRRM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note, I have raised the rating to explicit. Just in case you missed the change! Ahem.  
> Well... I think it is a bit... you may not...

“So how far then?”

Jaime watched as the various emotions chased across her face.

_Temptation, fear, curiosity… lust?_

Brienne was like a book. As each thought occurred to her it was like a page being turned over.

“All… maybe all of it, definitely some of it,” she swallowed; her eyes wide, the bluest eyes, even bluer than the waters off Casterley Rock, maybe as blue as the waters round Tarth. Possibly, one day, he might find out if that were true. Certainly more intoxicating than the brightest summer’s sky, “I trust you,” she whispered her eyes darting away briefly.

_She trusts me._

How long had it been since anyone had truly trusted in him?

“For that I thank you,” he whispered back, aware of an uncomfortable ache in his chest, his own eyes dropping to a random freckle on her naked collarbone, unable to look her in the face until the ache had eased.

Jaime studied her shoulders; her arms still crossed over her breasts, then up to her mouth slightly open, the corner of a tooth worrying her lower lip. Brienne’s mouth twitched slightly as if she would smile, but instead she kept staring at him with her huge cobalt blue eyes.

 “What?” he asked her.

“Nothing”

“No, I know your face… I know that expression…. What?”

“That… all that time long ago, I was so young and I worried so much, fretting over the way I looked, Connington, that horrible dress…”

_That bastard Connington,_ he thought with a sigh.

“I wish I could go back...” she paused as if looking for the right words, “to say to myself….”

“To say, don’t worry,” he whispered, his voice deliberately wicked, “Because one day the most handsome knight in the seven kingdoms will be…”

“If not the most modest,” she huffed.

“Me?” affronted, Jaime stared down at her with a mock frown, “I am Ser Jaime Lannister, a lion of Casterley Rock, the infamous Kingslayer….” Jaime moved over her, leaning on his forearms until he was almost nose to nose with her, “once rumoured to be the most beautiful man in Westeros. And the man…”

_A damn sight bloody better than Red Ronnet_ , Jaime thought, indignantly.

“… lying at your feet, Lady Brienne,” he teased her.

Brienne snorted gently and rolled her eyes, “I rather think that you are on a map table,” she replied, her tone dry, “As am I.”

“How appropriate,” Jaime started kissing her collarbone, gently peppering the soft skin with tiny butterfly kisses, “For I intend to explore every inch of you.”

With a groan, Brienne sank back. Jaime was unsure whether it was due to arousal or exasperation but he was happy to capitalize on either. He continued to kiss and lick, persuading her arms away from her chest so he could finally take the tips of her small breasts into his mouth, running his hand over the flesh there, feeling the slight softening of her breast next to the steely strength of muscle and tendon beneath. His cock twitched, already so hard that he was finding his breeches more than just a little uncomfortable.

“By the gods… wench,” he pulled her trousers and underclothes off completely with one swift tug, before kicking off the hot sticky tangle of his own. Jaime stared down at her pale, freckled skin and wondered if he’d ever felt more scared, or more excited, or more lustful. He didn’t want to think about what had been, or what might be yet. His whole world had curled in on itself until it consisted only of this woman and the map table.

“Brienne,” she corrected him, “not wench. Why are you staring?”

“You skin is so pale.”

She peered down at her bare skin, concerned, “Is that bad?”

“No… no,” he started laughing and had to stifle it quickly as the initial expression on her face of confusion, concern and vulnerability, was fast turning into something else.

“It’s not funny,” she pointed out.

“No, of course it’s not funny.” He immediately agreed, feeling contrite, “It’s actually quite beautiful.”

Brienne simply looked up and stared at him, wide-eyed.

_Such is her innocence, even a simple compliment was enough to render her speechless_ , he realised.

With wry grin and a glance back into her blue gaze, he ducked his head down and went back to tracing a line down the middle of her abdomen with his tongue, then lower. And then lower still.

“Jaime,” she breathed as she responded to his every caress with a slightly shocked yet delighted surprise. He caught up one leg, and felt her gasp, her hands fluttering down to settle on his head, heard the soft whimper of arousal as he bent his head to bite gently along the alabaster pale line of her upper leg, into the angle of her thigh, up to the centre of her.

“Jaime?” It was a whisper, unusually hesitant for his wench.

He lifted his head and saw the desire in the darkness of her eyes, the tremble of her plump well bitten lips, all of her ripe for his kisses yet she was frowning slightly, as if unsure as to what she should be doing in response.

_Can I truly satisfy both Brienne and her curiosity,_ he wondered. Was she going to absorb this knowledge, this awakening, and then once more revert back into being the formidable daughter of Tarth, the scowling, fighting terror of the knights of summer? On the surface she often seemed invulnerable but in truth her defences were far lower than Cersei’s had ever been.

_And she is nervous,_ Jaime realised, suddenly all too aware that he would have to be very careful, gentle, not to overwhelm her. Brienne was not a woman to whom giving up control came easily.

He moved up and then rolled over onto his back, taking Brienne with him, the map table groaning and rocking slightly as they went, but it held firm beneath them. Good Lannisport craftsmanship was not about to let him down quite yet, thought Jaime, gratefully.

_Gods, what a ridiculous place to attempt a seduction,_ he told himself as he attempted to get comfortable on the wooden surface, now that he was beneath them both.

Finally Jaime lay on his back and smiled up at her. After a moment she gave a tiny nod, as though she understood, and bent her head to kiss his lips. She was endearingly clumsy, he thought as she changed the angle of her mouth and her position across his body. Brienne was obviously thinking very hard about what she was doing, even showing the trace of the grimace that was evident when she fought, the tell in her features that was so obvious when she was about to strike. It was clear she was working out what pleased her and, he realised as he fisted his hand into the few remaining papers left on the damn table to stop himself grabbing her, she was working out what aroused him at the same time.

_By the gods, she’s a fast learner._

Her hand brushed over his chest, fingers catching at his left nipple as it went and he was so tense that the sensation cracked a groan from deep inside him.

“Jaime?” Brienne’s eyes were dark and blown in the half light. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he lied. It was more than pain, it was torture.

“Shouldn’t you be… well, you know,” she worried, “be on top of me?”

_Yes, yes, yes, to fuck you as quickly and as hard as I want to, yes, that’s where I would need to be._

“Absolutely not,” Jaime lied desperately again, his voice hoarse.

He could hear bewilderment threading through her voice.

“Because…,” she bent close to his ear, as if others might over hear them, embarrassed, “because what if I am too big, too heavy?”

Jaime froze at her words, the anger he felt at them giving him the strength to rise up and rest back on his elbows with an almighty pull from his already tense abdominal muscles. The result was that he lifted them both so that he could stare deep into her eyes from merely a breath away. “No, Brienne, you are not _too big_ or _too heavy_. Not for me, never for me.”

“Oh,” she looked deep into his eyes and then smiled. “I... I will carry on then... If you are not ...”

“You do that.”

 “Do you like it when I do this?” She ran her hands over his chest, letting her large, calloused thumbs with their blunt, chipped nails find his nipples and tease them. He could feel his skin shivering and twitching at her glancing touch.

_She is going to kill me. Slowly, in stages, she is going to keep her fucking promise to Stoneheart after all,_ he thought.

“Oh, yes,” he could feel his eyelids close, his lips parting to allow a gasping sigh to escape, her tentative touch enough to have his already hard body arching even further off the damn table.

A hand slid down his belly, cool fingers running across his hips exploring his abdomen, lower to finally trace the already painfully stiff length of him.

“Jaime?” she whispered, licking her lips as she looked up at him.

“Brienne?” he breathed back.

“Can I touch you there?” she asked him hesitantly.

“You do know that you are already touching me… ah,” he tried to smile back, but was all too aware it may look like a grimace as he tried to keep still under her hands. She was a quick study. In fact, Jaime thought, abandoning himself to her fumbling exploration, Brienne was a very fast learner indeed.

And if he didn’t do something to stop those roughened, capable fingers it was all going to be over disappointingly quickly.

“Brienne, by the gods…” he gasped as she took him in her hand and squeezed. Instantly, he moved his left hand to cover hers, stopping her from any more of her inquisitive fondling.

“Am I doing it wrong?”

“You are doing it just right… too right,” he moved his right arm up and around her neck, using it to gently tug her down to lie beside him. _Slowly,_ he reminded himself, _slowly,_ “Why not let me touch you?”

“How?” instantly she stiffened, and Jaime realised it was one thing for her to trust him but obviously something else for her to hand over her control to him completely.

“The same way you’ve been touching me,” he replied, before smiling slightly, “with a few obvious differences of course.” Jaime could almost feel the effort it took her to give a minute nod, to trust him to take the lead, to allow him to brush the nest of curls at the top of her legs, to ease one finger between the soft damp folds there. He found the spot he was looking for and stroked, her hips instantly rising at the shock of it. Jaime found that he liked the feeling of her gripping his shoulders so hard he was wincing as he continued his caress, just as he also liked the way she cried out against his mouth and arched her body into his hand trying to make the sensations that made her flush red and cling to him last a little longer when she finally came.

“That was very,” Brienne finally took a deep breath, “interesting.” She studied him for a moment, looking down at his body where he was clearly aroused, with his stiff cock all too evident, “I have heard that it hurts men to be that way and frustrated.”

Jaime daren’t ask where she had heard that, he simply stared dumbly at her and then gasped as she slid her hand between them and closed her fingers round him.

“I know I’m not very good, I know you are just being nice when you say its fine, but if I do something wrong, tell me and I will learn to do it properly.” Brienne assured him.

_She is going to kill me. Her good intentions will surely be the death of me_ , was Jaime’s last coherent thought.

Maybe Brienne was a little clumsy, and certainly shy, but after a brief moment of resistance all Jaime could do was fall back and let her have her way with him. He thrust into her hand, showing the rhythm he needed, giving her the confidence and the understanding that she was not hurting him and that she could be bolder, firmer, and slightly rougher. He gasped, held his breath and arched upwards as he thrust hard into her clasped fingers and then fell back with a bump as he spent over her hand.

He took several deep breaths before pulling her closer so he could kiss her.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, thinking of how much more he could have done.

“I liked it,” she mumbled against his hair,” very much.”

They lay together for a few moments before she turned to him and said, “Jaime, would you like to do it again?”

“Yes, but not on the map table,” Jaime told her, sitting up slowly and stretching out the knots in his back muscles with a heartfelt groan. “Let us move to the bed.”

 

Daven wandered in as Lew laid the food before Jaime as he lounged in his chair, feeling strangely at a loss.

Brienne lay still sleeping in their bed, exhausted, hidden from Daven’s view.

“What are you doing here?” Jaime asked him, “I thought you had left.”

“I had a feeling that a whole army of outlaws could ride up to the camp and that you would still be…” Daven looked Jaime in the eye and seemed to choose his words carefully before finally settling on, “busy.

Jaime simply raised an eyebrow, and watched Daven as he pulled up a chair and sat next to him at the table

“And as a result I thought I had better stay.” He said.

“Humph,” Jaime nodded at him.

“So?” Daven asked him, “have you settled things with the … er… maid,” Daven’s raised eyebrows suggested that he did not for one moment believe that things had not run their full course. “Did you finally let her pay for the horse?”

“Fuck off.”

“I like that your idea of seduction involves hauling a woman into your tent and not reappearing for almost a whole day,” Daven grinned, “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I never would have believed it.”

“You did hear me tell you to fuck off?”

“Yes coz, I did.” Daven sat back in the chair, his face suddenly sober, far more serious. “So what of your oath now, to the King, the Kingsguard and your white cloak?” he asked bluntly, “Will you resign from the King’s duty, and finally return to Casterley Rock as its Lord?”

_Is that a question from the Warden of the West, Ser Daven Lannister or cousin Daven?_ Jaime wondered.

Jaime shrugged and made a silent cutting gesture across his throat to stop Daven from talking, flicking his head in the direction of Lew. The two of them had done enough creeping around the woods hunting Stark men in silence that Daven immediately stopped speaking, shooting Jaime a baleful look.

_And what about Cersei?_ Daven’s expression seemed to ask as he continued to look Jaime straight in the eye _, what will your sister think of this?_

Jaime stared straight back.

_Nothing, my sister gave up the right to comment on anything I do a long, long time ago._


	9. Into the fire…

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Brienne remembers being a member of a Kingsguard…
> 
> All characters are owned by GRRM

_He promised me nothing, and I never asked. This never was about forever._

Brienne tried to roll over in the bed yet again, but one of her thighs was still trapped beneath Jaime’s long, muscular legs. She was restless, unable to sleep given what she had overheard the day before as she had awoken in the Lord Commander's bed. _“So what of your oath now, to the King, the Kingsguard and your white cloak?”_  Daven had asked the question of Jaime in the plainest terms possible _, “Will you resign from the King’s duty and finally return to Casterly Rock as its Lord?”_

And Jaime’s response to this had been?

_Silence_

In fact Daven’s question had been met with a silence so complete that Brienne had thought the two men had left the tent until they started talking about matters of little consequence some moments later.

The answer was obvious. It was no.

No, of course he would not. Jaime was not about to resign from the Kingsguard. He was going to return to Kings Landing, return to King Tommen and his sister, such was his loyalty and love for the captivating Cersei Lannister, the Light of the West.

“Oh, Jaime,” Brienne felt a wretched knot of emotion coil in her chest as she thought about Jaime returning to the capital, unable to stay away.

 _What must it feel like to be loved like that?_ She wondered wistfully.

 _You’ll never know what that feels like,_ said a small voice with the tone of Septa Roelle in her head _, look in the looking glass and know that._

Both Brienne and Jaime had bathed the night before, and as she stared down at Jaime, naked in the half-light she thought yet again how much more beautiful he was without his clothing. His long lean body draped over the bed covers as he slept giving him the look of a reclining statue, all elegant limbs and relaxed muscle. The fact that his body was relatively unscarred, testament to just how good a swordsman he had been until he had lost his sword hand. The fresher marks and scratches, evidence enough that even the lack of his right hand was not enough to stop Ser Jaime Lannister from engaging in armed combat.

As Brienne flicked her gaze up over his body and finally back to his face, she became aware of his inquisitive green gaze watching her as she studied him from head to toe. Blushing fiery red, Brienne lifted her chin slightly on meeting his look, refusing to glance away, fighting the urge to hide underneath the covers away from his sharp-eyed scrutiny.

“Oh, Jaime?” he murmured, stretching out beside her before pulling her into his embrace, “did I hear a note of disappointment in your voice Milady?” his whisper, laced with the huskiness of morning lit a fire deep within her. Jaime nuzzled into her neck for a kiss.

This felt safer - exciting, inflammatory but at least she understood what he was about as his lips teased her skin, unlike some of the things his wicked mouth had persuaded her into the night before. She cursed ever having mentioned any kind of arrangement with Jaime Lannister as he seemed to regard it a constant necessity to gently, persistently, push her boundaries. It was as if he was enjoying challenging her as much intimately as he ever did physically and mentally during their days together.

He moved downwards, sliding along her body, tasting her with his all too knowing tongue, licking and teasing her breasts. He took a little extra time to gently pull on each of her nipples with his teeth until she arched off the bed with a groan, “Jaime!” she dug her fingers into his mane of blond hair, catching at his silky locks, but Jaime kept moving, his hot mouth going on to move across her belly. It left a rapidly cooling path in its scorching wake as he went further and further down her body.

“Jaime? Where are… Jaime!” Shocked, Brienne could only clutch at his head as he nuzzled the thick blonde curls at the top of her thighs reducing her to a wet, hot aching mess.

 _It was such a stupid idea,_ wailed the voice inside her head, this time all hers _, what was I thinking of?_ Jaime’s tongue and mouth relentlessly teased and stroked and sucked her, as his shoulders and arms gently eased her unresisting legs apart.

_It was so stupid asking him to…_

His fingers followed his tongue, slipping just inside her as she exploded once more into that violent maelstrom of feeling that seemed to combine delight, anguish, everything.

“Jaime,” she whispered her voice breaking as she spoke.

 _By the gods I sound so needy, so pathetic,_ she scolded herself.

“Brienne?” he had moved to lie next to her, drawing her closer to him until her body was flush with his.

 _I love you so much,_ Brienne thought, looking at him.

 _Jaime might not love me,_ she realised, _but he has taken the stupid suggestion that he might teach me something of the way things are between a man and a woman very seriously._

And had given her what he thought she wanted, with a care that had truly surprised her. To make it as good an experience as he possibly could, Jaime had taken it upon himself to look after her. Putting her needs before his own with much teasing and grumbling, just as he had tried to do in that awful time with Hoat, just as he had in the bear pit…

He was staring at her as if expecting a response.

“That was…” she started to speak, her voice a croak.

“Interesting? Good, that’ll do,” he grinned at her, “and you look so much better this morning without half the riverbed in your hair. Are you tired?”

“I have only just woken up,” she answered thinking it better not to mention her lack of actual sleep, “why?”

In answer his hand began to move more firmly over her body, turning her in his arms while those clever fingers moved between her legs once more to touch and tease while she gasped his name against his mouth. Struggling with the sensation of him making her feel so helpless, Brienne slid one hand down between their bodies and curled her fingers around his cock relishing the feeling of control it gave her.

It stopped his mouth on hers and his moving fingers halted completely before twitching slightly

“Yes,” he said, his voice low, strained, “yes, like that. Move your fingers, harder – ay, Brienne!”

Yet again she lamented being so clumsy, so unskilled, all too aware of how big and rough her hands were.

_Not dainty hands, no soft palms or delicate fingers._

“Ye gods woman, don’t stop now,” he growled, in that moment a perfect golden lion, kissing her roughly as if his lips could compel her to take him in her hand and stroke him to completion. “Hold me Brienne, feel me… gods yes, like that.”

To experience the powerful urgency of his body responding to her caresses while he teased her to the brink of madness over and over again made her blood race and her skin prickle with arousal. Then the tightening knot of sensation in her abdomen broke again, shattered, just as Jaime surged into her rough calloused grasp, his desperate groan mingling with her panting cries. Brienne collapsed, limp, as Jaime fell back shuddering with the force of his release, covering them both with his seed as they slumped together into a hot sticky satisfied tangle of covers, limbs and skin.

_Oh, Jaime._

 

Brienne sat by the camp stockade watching Thoros eat his food, confident this was the one place Jaime would not pass by. She had had to get out of the tent, her thoughts kept racing in stupid patterns of rumination around the same few subjects; Tarth, Oathkeeper, Lady Catelyn, Sansa, Cersei, Jaime…

 _I’m so confused,_ she thought.

Thoros watched her as he munched, taking a swig of water from the skin by his side, casting a glance towards the guard that sat by the fire apparently ignoring them.

“Upset you has he?”

Brienne glowered at the red priest as she stabbed an unfortunate twig into the ground at her feet.

“I don’t know who you might mean,” she replied coolly.

“No, I’m sure you don’t,” Thoros smiled at his bread before taking another bite, “but that poor twig might,” he said between chews.

Brienne stabbed the stick once more into the ground before throwing it far off into the bushes.

“He’s a Lannister,” Thoros continued to chew slowly, coughing slightly, “Lannisters always pay their debts and they always annoy people. I can remember him at Pyke, bloody Ser Jaime Lannister, what a cocky little…”

“I am not annoyed at Ser Jaime Lannister,” Brienne told him curtly.

“Ah, then you are annoyed at yourself then,” Thoros observed with a sly smile.

Brienne stared at Thoros of Myr, dumbfounded.

 _Does everyone know?_ Camp gossip meant he must have heard something from one of the guards. If Thoros, a prisoner knew about her and the Lord Commander, who did not?

The blush of mortification that swept over her face seared her skin with a burning heat.

 _Could it put Jaime at risk?_ The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was expected to be above reproach. Just how many problems had she caused Jaime by making the suggestion she had, and to one as impulsive as Jaime Lannister?

_A man who had jumped into a bear pit with one hand and no sword to save her._

“I am still a maid,” she mumbled, not even knowing quite why she said it. Jaime had not taken her properly, Brienne knew that. She knew that Jaime had done everything up to the point of her being required to drink a draught of moon tea, although there was rumoured to be plenty of tansy tea available in the Riverlands if he had. If Jaime had been completely carried away by passion, if it had been about consummating their mutual love.

But what they had wasn’t about love, she thought miserably, at least not for Jaime.

_And Thoros wasn’t interested, not really._

“Do you know what he means to do with me Milady?” Thoros asked, coughing slightly.

“No… although if he could have hung Dondarrion several times over to show that he could be executed, I think he might have done it.” Brienne told him.

Thoros started coughing, a long hacking bout that only stopped when he took a swig of water from the skin by his side.

“It is remarkable how completely our positions are reversed,” Thoros observed, “but I cannot allow Ser Jaime Lannister to simply hang me.” He stared into the flames burning in the fire pit not ten feet from his prison, raindrops hissing as they hit the flames. “I have too much to do. We have a war to fight.”

“But Ser Jaime has settled the Riverlands…”

“This? This is nothing,” Thoros replied scornfully as he climbed to his feet and walked to the wooden bars that marked the boundary of his freedom. “The Targaryen girl with her dragons marching on Westeros… that is nothing.”

Brienne looked at the red priest and knew he didn’t lie; dread hitting her chest as she thought of the fighting yet to come.

_More death, more loss._

“The battle of the gods, between life and death, light and darkness… that is the battle that keeps me awake at night, terrified for the future and cursing Stannis for following the red witch north before I can get there.”

She stood and walked towards Thoros as he continued to talk.

“I … need to go north,” Thoros shook the bars in frustration, “The red witch, Melisandre is obsessed with Stannis Baratheon being the one who can lead this fight. But he is not… the one. The fires show me that much.”

“Stannis Baratheon?”

He shook his head, “Stannis is not the one.”

“I have unfinished business with Stannis Baratheon.” She murmured.

Memories flooded her mind. Renly dying in her arms, her hard won rainbow cloak soaked with Renly’s blood, hanging limply from her as she fought for her life, Lady Catelyn’s shouting “Stannis killed him” with such certainty.

 _I will kill him,_ her own words coming back to haunt her.

 _I swear it, I swear it, I swear it. I swore a vow. Three times I swore. Lady Catelyn heard me,_ Brienne remembered.

That was before Jaime… before oath keeper… before Stoneheart. But it seemed like only yesterday.

And what did Brienne truly have left to her now?

She never had had Jaime; she had just borrowed him for a while.

Being with Jaime was like looking at the sun, his being so bright it obliterated everything else from her vision. So all consuming, the experience was likely to leave her blinded even after she walked away, Brienne thought angrily. Jaime would return to his family at King’s Landing and if she was fool enough to follow it would all be as it was before, with her on the outside of the charmed Lannister circle. Never quite able to be part of court life, never able to fit in with the beautiful women and superior knights.

She was the woman who dressed as a man, the woman who fought like a man, the ugly freak who was not a man. Maybe not even the heir of Tarth anymore.

_And so when the time finally came… there was no one, or anything, to hold me back._

“Leave us,” Brienne told the guard.

“I’ve been told to stay,” the guard protested stubbornly.

Brienne went to draw her sword, and watched as the guard beat a hasty exit from the area next to Thoros of Myr’s prison.

“Stannis is at the wall, at Castle Black,” Thoros told her quietly, “I know this for a fact.”

“I swore I would avenge Renly.” She replied.

Brienne thought of Jaime, of Tarth, of all the things she used to have, maybe in another life could have had, but in this one did not. “A long time ago… I swore I would avenge his death. I was one of his Kingsguard… I am thrice sworn to avenge him…”

“Stannis Baratheon is at the wall with an army.”

“I will take you north, if you take me to Stannis,” Brienne told him.


	10. The Oathkeeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Jaime and Daven have a disagreement, and Brienne is noticeably absent…
> 
> All and any mistakes are mine...  
> All characters are owned by GRRM

Daven grabbed Podrick Payne from the hands of the two men at arms who had brought him to the tent, and started shaking Pod by the scruff of his neck; much like a dog would shake a rat.

“Tell us… tell me,” Daven held the boy up so that his feet barely touched the ground, “exactly why you were caught sneaking around the edge of camp with two horses and enough food to keep someone fed half way to Kings Landing. Where had you arranged to meet her?” he snarled at the unfortunate boy dangling from his fist, “tell us where your bloody Milady has gone!”

“I d... don’t know,” Pod insisted, his face red, hair in disarray as he was given another good shaking by Daven Lannister.

 “I was c… c… coming back because it was dark,” Pod sobbed, his voice clogging his throat as he tried to force the words out. “I was looking for her.”

“I do not believe you,” the Warden of the West sneered in the terrified boys face, “tell us where to find the Maid of Tarth.”

“But I don’t know anything,” Pod’s eyes caught Jaime's own, desperate, “Ser,” he cried, his voice a high wail, “I don’t know where she is… I don’t!”

Pod's face was redder than Daven’s cloak, tears trickling down his face as he tried to breathe through the man’s vice like grip.

“Enough,” Jaime said, but his voice was drowned out by the continuing noisy furore following the discovery of Thoros of Myr’s escape and the disappearance of Brienne of Tarth.

Jaime didn’t know what to think. Daven’s dismay at the loss of their prisoner was the least of his problems as far as he was concerned. He was still trying to come to terms with the fact that Brienne had simply walked out of the camp with Thoros, and left him behind.

“I don’t know where she’s gone.” Pod chose to appeal to him rather than Daven.

“So why two horses, Pod?” Jaime asked him, had to ask him, hoping that maybe Pod did know something about Brienne’s whereabouts that he had not yet divulged. Brienne had always been very attached to her young squire, even to the point of leading both of them to Lady Stoneheart in an effort to save him.

“I thought… I thought I could maybe find her, help her if she needed help.” Podrick’s eyes sought his, a desperate light that Jaime recognised all too well within them. “I thought she might be in trouble… that maybe Thoros had…”

It was the same fear that had gripped Jaime on hearing that Thoros and Brienne had apparently left together. That somehow the red priest had threatened or coerced the Maid against her will and that she was at this very moment in trouble, and needing help. Hearing Podrick Payne voice the same fear somehow made it more possible, more plausible and far more uncomfortable.

The Warden of the West’s reaction was quite different.

“You treacherous little cunt,” Daven cursed, throwing Pod down onto the floor, “I should order you hung as the horse thief you are.”

“Enough,” said Jaime again, slightly louder this time.

“Or maybe I should cut off your little…” growled Daven.

“Enough!” roared Jaime, banging his golden hand down on the table with such force that it landed with an almighty crash, marking the wood, his voice loud enough to make even the soldiers outside the tent fall silent.

Daven took a step back, an ugly twist to his lips as he said, “We will be a bloody laughing stock, the fools of the Riverlands when it becomes well known that we have let the red priest slip through our fingers. It will no doubt be even worse when it is made known that the Maid of Tarth, the very one who stole Jaime Lannister away from North, was up to her old tricks but this time with Thoros of Myr.”

“I do not believe that Brienne meant to deceive us,” Jaime told him.

“You are thinking with your cock, cousin,” Daven told him angrily. “That woman has made a damn fool of you!”

 “And you are not coz?” Jaime regarded Daven for a moment, finally voicing the question that had been lurking in the darker corners of his mind since he had met Daven on his way to resolve the situation at Riverrun. “What did Cersei promise you when she made you Warden of the West, Ser Daven? There are others who would have been far better qualified to have assumed that role.”

Jaime watched Daven go red as he thought, _myself included._  

“I didn’t want the damn title or the responsibility,” Daven responded.

 _No but you wanted the recognition,_ Jaime thought as he studied his cousin’s all too familiar features _. And Cersei could make any man feel special if she put her mind to it._

Cersei would not have had to promise him anything, Cousin Daven was a more ambitious man than he remembered.

“The so called Maid of Tarth has your mind clouded with lust,” his cousin snapped at him, his voice low, “is that all it takes to confound Ser Jaime Lannister?”

Jaime lifted his chin to stare Daven directly in the eye.

Daven leant forward to add, “A giant ugly bear of a maid to hold him down, and fuck him senseless?”

Jaime didn’t think, one moment he felt an icy rage at Daven’s words grip him and the next he was standing with the point of his sword resting against Ser Daven Lannister’s collarbone, the pressure of the point making the material of his cousin’s cloak crumple slightly, “I would remind you that there is no word to describe a cousin slayer Daven.”

 _Not bad for a left-handed cripple,_ Jaime thought wryly aware that he was breathing hard.

The pavilion was silent save for the rattle of sword hilts as their owners went to seize them.

Daven noisily cleared his throat before saying, “I… I… apologise Ser Jaime. That was uncalled for.”

Jaime dropped the tip of the sword to the floor by his cousin’s feet. Not taking his eyes from Daven’s flushed face, Jaime asked the assembled knights and men, “What of the stockade guard?”

“He is under arrest,” said Ser Kennos, coughing slightly to clear his own throat as he stepped forward, glancing quickly at the other men present.

“What has he said?”

“That the Maid sent him away and he went.”

“Bring him here,” Jamie told them, finally returning his sword to his scabbard, flexing the fingers of his left hand as he released the hilt.

_It still felt strange when he dwelt on using his left._

Pod stood to one side, wiping his face on his sleeve again and again, his chin quivering slightly as he attempted to control his emotions in front of the assembled knights.

He was trying hard not to cry.

“Podrick,” Jaime instructed him softly, “go and help Lew with the horses, and ask Peck to find the maester…,” he could not remember the man’s name, “and send him to me. I have a question for him.”

Pod nodded frantically, his expression pathetically grateful as he fled the tent.

“You allow that boy to get away with too much,” Daven growled.

“He saved my brother’s life,” Jaime raised his brows slightly, “and it makes me feel, maybe wrongly, that I have a fair idea of whose side Podrick is on. Unlike some I could name.”

Daven’s lips tightened and Jaime walked away to sit on the other side of the map table, picking up a chair as he went.

The stockade guard was bundled into the pavilion by another two men at arms. He was a surly westerner who looked as if he had seen a few Lannister campaigns under the command of both Jaime and Tywin.

“So then, you were the man on duty when Thoros of Myr made his escape?” Jaime eyed the guard up and down, “why did you leave your post?”

“The woman… the Kingslayer’s whor… your… Milady told me to.”

 _Kingslayer’s whore, was that really still the name they used for her behind his back?_ The ease with which it tripped off the man’s tongue suggested yes.

 _She had tried so hard to prevent that kind of gossip about the camp,_ he thought sourly.

“And just like that, you went?” Jaime quizzed him, tapping the fingers of his left hand lightly on the wood of the map table.

“No Ser,” the man regarded him truculently, “she told me to leave them and the first time I refused.”

“And then what happened?”

“She drew her sword, Ser Jaime.”

“What is your name?”

“Lym, Ser, Lym Hill.”

“So, Lym, what happened after that?”

“I left to find Ser Kennos, but by the time I had come back with Ser Kennos and more guards they were both gone.”

“Humph!” snorted Daven, sitting heavily in the chair opposite Jaime’s.

“What were they talking about before they asked you to leave them?” Jaime asked.

“That you were probably going to hang him, Ser. To make an example of him like you would have Lord Beric.”

“Chance would have been a fine thing,” Ser Daven muttered.

“Anything else you can tell me?” Jaime asked him.

“Thoros, the priest, was going on about having to get north. He’s been going on about it since we stuck him in the stockade. Thoros was always talking about a battle, a battle between good and evil, a battle between light and dark.”

“And what do you think of his words?” Jaime asked him, wondering if the charismatic Thoros had managed to win over more to his side than just Brienne.

“He’s a priest, it’s always a case of good and evil with them lot, Ser.”

_So Lym Hill was not a religious man and would still appear to be loyal._

“Did Brienne of Tarth say anything?” Daven asked him.

“Not much, not much at all until the red priest started going on about Lord Stannis being in the north with a red witch.”

“Stannis Baratheon?” Jaime felt his stomach plummet and his heart jump in his breast.

_Bloody hell Brienne!_

“She said she had unfinished business with Stannis, but she was mumbling like.” Lym looked as if he was about to spit on the floor, but thought better of it, “We’ve all got unfinished business with Stannis Baratheon. The battle against his army at Kings Landing got my best mate killed.”

“Renly Baratheon,” Jaime breathed almost to himself. “Another damned oath…”

_There was a shadow. I know how mad it sounds. I was helping Renly into his armour and the candles blew out and there was blood everywhere. It was Stannis, Lady Catelyn said, his shadow._

Brienne’s argument with Loras Tyrell came back to him with a sudden clarity. Loras had been prepared to kill her outright over Renly’s death, over her failure to protect their king when she was wearing the rainbow cloak of his Kingsguard.

 _I should have called her Oathkeeper, not the bloody sword,_ he thought.

It was an oath she had sworn before Jaime had even met her, before she had managed to worm her way under his skin and into his life. Not a day would go by when he would not think of her or wonder what she was doing when they were apart, even before they had been reunited in the Riverlands. This latest period of them being together had had him wondering if he could bear them being apart again. Now all he had to worry about was whether Brienne would actually survive long enough for them to even meet once more.

_And why is Stannis in the north?_

“Why is Stannis in the north?” Jaime suddenly asked Daven.

At that moment, the maester walked into the pavilion escorted by Lew, bowing slightly to the men present.

“Ah, just the person,” Jaime motioned the maester over, “Did you speak with the maester at Riverrun when we were there?”

“I did, Ser.”

“Did you hear mention anything of note? Any news from the north, maybe gossip from the other houses?”  Jaime asked him.

“A raven from the north?” Daven asked him, a scoffing tone to his voice.

“I have been busy in the Riverlands for a good while now; there is no reason for me to have heard about all the goings on in Westeros, cousin.” Jaime told him coldly.

“The maester did mention a call for support from the Night’s Watch. I think given the number of men besieging Riverrun, he thought it might bode well for the wall that such a sizeable force seemed available for such things.” The maester shrugged, and then looked a little awkward.

“Spit it out man,” Jaime told him.

“Stannis sent letters out more recently, calling the great houses to his side.”

“Ah,” Jaime observed, “so not only is Stannis in the north, but he’s keeping himself busy. As Warden of the West I take it you knew of this?” he asked Daven.

Daven nodded abruptly.

“No invitation for House Lannister then I take it?” Jaime sat back in his chair, a faint smile twisting his mouth. “Don’t answer that, either of you. I might feel slighted.”

Jaime tapped the table once, twice more.

“Lew, get me the map of the Riverlands.” Lew pounced on the charts and ephemera that had been piled onto the table on one end since the day that Brienne had come back from the river in one piece. He laid it out on the table for Ser Jaime, securing the corners with wine cups and weights so that Jaime could study it fully. Jaime waved over another branch of candles and put it on one of the edges of the map that was still stubbornly refusing to lie flat.

“What are you looking for?” Daven asked him.

“The way north,” he replied.

“You jest?” Daven seemed appalled, “Let the woman go Jaime. By the gods, she has served you false, not once but twice.”

“Brienne has gone to the wall to kill Stannis,” Jaime told him bluntly.

“Cousin, let her go.” Ser Daven looked at him long and hard, “I am speaking to you now as your bannerman, your cousin. Jaime, she attempted to lead you to your death at Stoneheart’s hands and now she has stolen away Thoros of Myr to deliver him to a pretender in the North.” Daven shook his head, “Give her up, Jaime. Give her up before she is the death of you. She is a troublesome, headstrong maid, who is not even heir to Tarth since her island was taken. For the love of the seven, don’t just follow her into danger again.”

 _Had that been part of the arrangement?_ Jaime wondered _. One last new experience before she went to avenge Renly, kill Stannis and face almost certain death._

And what of her vow to Lady Catelyn, _to him,_ to find Sansa and protect her. Had that all been forgotten in the face of Thoros and his persuasive words, all part of the red priest’s desperate efforts to get to the north. Or had Brienne heard something more about where the Stark girls might be that she had not shared with him.

“No,” Jaime pulled the map towards him slightly, dragging the weights and candles with it, “she saved my life.”

“And you saved hers… at least twice from what I’ve heard.” Daven argued, “So when are you going to stop feeling the need to save such a rash, idiotic wench?”

“Brienne, her name is Brienne,” Jaime corrected him automatically.

“Brienne of Tarth is a liability,” Daven insisted, “and you’ve yet to find her. The Riverlands is easily big enough to hide one stupid woman and a crazy priest.”

“Maybe,” Jaime acknowledged, “but I’m going to try and see if I can prevent her from confronting a man with ambitions to be king as an act of revenge for another man who thought her absurd.” He glanced across the table at Daven who was glowering at him in clear disagreement.

“You are either mad or…” Daven started-

“In love,” Jaime held his cousin’s gaze with his own, “I know. It is strange – the things I do…”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne's POV to finish the story... thanks for sticking with it lovely people!!


	11. “And down the road from here to there …”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Brienne finds being on her own once more the toughest challenge of all…
> 
> All characters are owned by GRRM

Brienne had not been able sleep properly since they had left the Lannister camp.

She had already spent two nights lying on the cold hard ground, staring at the dark trees around her, listening to the rain falling on the leaves overhead. If Brienne was unlucky enough to doze off, the nightmares of Biter’s maw coming towards her, ready to chew off the rest of her face, woke her up again quick enough. Her rest was further disturbed by Thoros, who too often coughed long and hard into the frosty darkness as he lay close by; a wracking chorus of noise and steamy breath sufficient to wake the dead, as well as any outlaws that might be lurking within the treeline.

_Winter was most definitely coming._

So it was that Brienne found herself glancing back at the sign of a half derelict inn, holding on to Thoros of Myr as he stumbled alongside her, anxiously checking that it remained still and silent as she hurried them past looking for something better.

“Do you intend to walk to the wall in a mere three days, Milady?” Thoros wheezed.

It felt as if a thousand eyes watched her from the inn's darkened windows, a waking nightmare as she rushed the red priest on. Brienne knew she had to find them somewhere safe to sleep before she dropped from exhaustion and Thoros coughed himself to death, but this place was not it. It reminded her too much of the inn at the crossroads.

“No,” Brienne told him curtly, “I intend to find us a place to stop where our throats might have a chance of not being cut before dawn.” She glanced down at the red priest as she spoke, “preferably somewhere with a decent fire and a bed where you can rest properly or I’ll be burying you before a sennight is out.”

"I must say your concern is much appreciated Milady," Thoros croaked, before laughing long and hard, his amusement descending into a paroxysm of spluttering breaths.

 _It is not only Thoros that needs to rest properly,_ Brienne told herself as she continued on her way, half dragging, half carrying him through the cold dark night. Her heart was beating faster than usual, her skin slightly damp with sweat as she frantically scanned the hedgerows and pathways for any sign of an attack. Her head was pounding; eyes sore and itchy from lack of rest.

Finally, an inn came into sight that was well lit and looked busy. Brienne studied it for some moments, propping Thoros against a tree so she could scout closer and convince herself that it was a safe place to stop. Or at least as safe as it could be, situated as it was in the heart of the war ravaged Riverlands. She was reassured by what looked like a party of respectable merchants stopping by its main entrance. _Easier to stay anonymous, less likely to be a trap or full of outlaws,_ she told herself. The attack by the remnants of the Brave Companions one of the most vivid memories that kept replaying in her exhausted mind. Awake or asleep, she could not seem to escape it .

“It looks rather lively,” Thoros grumbled under his breath, “Too lively. There’ll be no rooms for the likes of us.”

“There is safety in numbers,” Brienne told him sharply, feeling defensive.

“Too risky,” the red priest squinted up at her, “there’ll have been a Lannister scout banging on every inn door within ten miles the moment we were clear of the camp.”

“We’ll sleep in the stables if need be,” she told him, “You need to stay warm and dry for a few nights if you are going to heal.”

Thoros grunted, whether in agreement or disagreement Brienne did not really know or care.

“I will claim you as my uncle,” she told him as she dragged and carried him from the trees onto the road that led up to the inn door. Looking around, Brienne grabbed the hood on Thoros of Myr’s cloak and pulled it over his head, obscuring his face. She looked at him suspiciously as they came to a halt, "do I need to hobble you before I go into the inn?”

The red priest’s eyes regarded her from the depths of the hood, “Are you still going north?”

Brienne looked at him as if was talking nonsense, “Of course.”

“Then I’ll stay here.” Thoros sat heavily on an upturned barrel left by the door of the inn.

She looked at him briefly and gave him a curt nod before pulling her own hood over her distinctive stringy hair, glancing briefly up at the sky where flakes of snow were mixing with the rain before she stepped inside to talk to the inn keep.

 

“No.” The innkeeper frowned at Brienne, shaking his head, “we have no rooms Ser.”

“Not one?” Brienne’s dreams of a hot fire and a warm bed dwindled.

“No Ser, not a one.”

Brienne felt in her pockets for some of her precious hoard of coins. “Could I maybe not persuade you to find us a corner in the stables then?” she asked, pulling a piece of silver from her cloak and tapping it on the doorpost. “My uncle is suffering from the cold.”

Unfortunately, there is no room there either,” the innkeeper told her politely, “and I do not think your pockets are as deep as those of the knight who has just bespoken the last of our beds and stalls.”

Snatching the piece of silver back into her palm, Brienne frowned briefly for she had not seen any liveried men at arms or armoured servants when she and Thoros had walked past the stables.

“Of course…” Brienne pushed her coin deep back into her pocket, noticing that the innkeeper had been distracted by something or someone behind her.

By the way his face lit up, Brienne felt it prudent to shrink even further into the hood of her cloak. The footsteps she could hear behind her indicated clearly that his guest would appear to be approaching her back.

_I have to get out of here!_

It could be any one of a number of Frey, Blackwood or, gods forbid, even Lannister lordlings that had always seemed to be about the camp. Brienne would not put it past the ones she had encountered to use their family name to secure a room.

 _Or the recapture of Thoros to improve their prospects,_ she thought grimly.

Stepping to one side, ready to melt away, she found her hood snagged from her head, falling away from her pale frizzy locks before she could prevent it, to reveal the fact that she was in fact a woman.

A big, ugly, scarred woman, with a hole in one cheek.

With a hissed breath, the innkeeper looked her up and down, a distinct look of contempt in his gaze as he regarded her.

Brienne gritted her teeth and stared back at him, it taking all her resolution and concern regarding Thoros not to turn, and ignominiously leave.

“Well now,” said a voice from behind her “is there a problem?”

It was a cool, indifferent voice as hauntingly familiar as it was, at this moment in time, unwelcome.

 _No!_ She froze, the blood in her veins turning to ice, _what can I have done to deserve this?_

_It can’t be…_

Brienne briefly shut her eyes, and then opened them again.

“I… you are most kind Ser, but I beg you will not concern yourself with my problems.” She ground out, not turning round but instead keeping her gaze firmly fixed to the stone wall behind the innkeeper’s head, her hand creeping slowly onto the hilt of her sword.

A gloved hand seized her sword arm, pulling it slightly back and away from her weapon.

“But Lady Brienne, I seem to find it so hard not to.”

The startled innkeep immediately assumed a toadying mien.

“I’m so sorry my Lord, I didn’t realise that this individual was one of your party…”

“Oh no… I’m not.” Brienne tugged her arm back towards the sword at her hip.

“Oh but yes, I rather think you are,” Jaime Lannister’s grip held firm on her as they each silently tried to out pull the other, “and did I hear you mention dear uncle… Thoros?”

“Jaime… don’t.” she croaked desperately.

The hold on her arm remained constant, sure.

“Come, I have a room waiting.” Jaime used his hold on her to turn her round and face him, but as he tried to tow her after him, Brienne stuck the toes of her boots into the floor refusing to budge, “how did you…?”

“We’ve travelled these roads before, Milady,” he bared his teeth at her in a parody of a smile. “Did you think I would forget so quickly the routes you would choose and your unique, and sometimes curious, reasoning why?”

 _Why do I always manage to forget quite how sharp your wits are, Jaime Lannister?_ She scolded herself bitterly scowling at him.

Brienne glanced back at the innkeepers face but there was no help to be had there, so she turned to grimace at Jaime instead. As they both glared at each other, the inn door was thrust open and two of Jaime’s men at arms, casually dressed as servants, walked past dragging Thoros coughing loudly between them. They bore him off in the direction of Jaime’s private room to the rear of the tap.

“Uncle Thoros looks rather unwell,” Jaime observed caustically, his eyes following the red priest’s progress before his gaze returned to regard Brienne, angry green wildfire flaring in their depths.

“I can explain,” she told him desperately, squaring her shoulders defiantly as she faced him. His anger and hurt was like a tangible presence between them.

“I’m sure you can,” he replied, “but let’s do it in private.”

The innkeeper, who was clearly eavesdropping, made a show of looking busy as Jaime jerked her towards the private room, hot on the heels of the coughing priest.

Brienne stumbled after him as he towed her through the inn tap and into a smaller wood panelled room to the rear of the building. A fire burned merrily in the grate, and a table set for one had obviously been recently abandoned by the man who now released her hand so quickly it was as if it burned him. Brienne felt her heart lurch sickeningly as she watched him walk away from her.

 _I said I can explain,_ she thought desperately, _but can I really do that without disappointing him and humiliating myself._

She took a deep breath, speaking quickly, stumbling slightly over the words.

“I...” Brienne looked at him, her jaw clenched. “I... thought you might not want to hang Thoros, but in the end you would have to. As an example to others that might think to reinstate the Brotherhood... but he was not the one who wanted you dead Jaime.” Her voice sounded strained as she started talking, trailing into a pathetic whisper as she finished. "That was Stoneheart."

"So you thought you would save me the trouble?" 

"I thought I saw a way to help you avoid more conflict with the lords of the Riverlands."

"Remind me to thank you after I've persuaded Daven not to hang you instead."

"I swore an oath when Renly died," Brienne flushed red but held his gaze," and if I can use Thoros to get north and kill Stannis, I will. 

"But?" Jaime's slightly raised eyebrows made a mockery," Has something gone wrong with this cunning plan? Oh, sorry... of course, I'm going to stop you."

"I swore an oath..."

"You swore an oath to Catelyn Stark to get me to Kings Landing and I don't remember one inn or one comfortable bed being planned on that occasion."

"I... no," she couldn't hold his gaze,"it's not the same."

"Not the same?" Jaime snorted dismissively, "How different could it be? Hard, cold ground, wet mornings, being soaked to the skin for days on end? Come, come Brienne, where is your sense of adventure."

"Gone," Brienne muttered,"it died with Stoneheart's noose about its neck, even as I was cut down to find and kill you. I seem to have no taste for sleeping in the open any more."

Brienne could feel Jaime's eyes on her as she stood there with her eyes downcast.

“Scared?” Jaime’s voice was scornful, “You, Lady Brienne? You seemed bold enough when you walked Thoros of Myr out of my stockade.”

Brienne stared down at her big feet in her oversized wet boots but looked up again soon enough at his words and shot him a withering look, hurt but still unable to lie, “Thoros is ill, he was ill before I even took him out of the stockade... if he had remained any longer in that pen I would have found it impossible to get him north.”

“I am forced to agree that the life of a hedge knight does not appear to suit you… you look like shit.”

With his arms crossed, Jaime stood and regarded her. His expression cool.

_How can I describe the nightmares I have been having to him? Biter chewing my face off, the memory of being throttled by Lady Stoneheart’s noose…_

“I found it impossible to sleep in the open and I couldn’t stop at the inn we passed earlier, it was too quiet… it made me think of the place where I fought Biter.” She hated making excuses; it made her sound weak, needy. “I simply could not stop there, I was too scared of what might be waiting for me.”

_Scared and weak._

“Brienne,” Jaime looked at her, his face giving away nothing, “you may not be the brightest, but you are still possibly the bravest person I know.”

“I don’t think I am… not since the inn at the crossroads… the Brotherhood without Banners… Stoneheart,” she confided in him haltingly, trying to make her sudden affliction not sound so pathetic to the fearless man before her. A man who had jumped into a bear pit to defend her, had fought a war against the young Wolf and had almost won it for House Lannister, a lion that had faced down the dishonour of killing his king because it was the right thing to do. “I cannot walk in the dark without seeing shadows in the bushes. I can’t even escape into sleep without seeing Biter's teeth.”

Jaime studied her for a moment before shaking his head in what looked like disbelief.

“What if Thoros is right Jaime? What if there is a mighty battle about to break at the wall?” Brienne rubbed her eyes in an effort to keep her fatigue at bay, “what if I am somehow supposed to be there, ready to fulfill some destiny because of my oath to Renly. I’m scared if I break that oath… I’m scared…”

“Of being me,” Jaime could obviously not suppress the snort of derision that accompanied his words.

Brienne rolled her eyes at him, too tired to argue with him further on that point.

“I’m so tired,” She sank onto the stool by the fire, “I’m so tired of failing at everything I try to do. I have failed my father, I failed Renly when I was supposed to guard him with my life, and I didn’t deliver you whole back to Kings Landing, your sword hand was lost…”

“But the rest of me thanks you often and most sincerely,” Jaime mocked her with the first flash of real humour he had shown since their meeting.

“Lady Catelyn died without me to protect her. If I had been there for her…”

“Walder Frey would have cut your throat along with hers,” he reminded her grimly.

“And now Thoros is ill.”

“He has gaol fever and it was the stockade that made him sick, not you, stupid wench.” Jaime told her irritably.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What, stupid? By the gods I've never met someone who feels so bad over fate getting the upper hand.”

Brienne covered her face trying to hide the extent of her misery from those all too perceptive green eyes, “I have broken my oath to virtually everyone I have been sworn to.”

“Who gives a damn about your oath to Renly, to Lady Catelyn?  I’m far more interested in your promises to me.”

Brienne uncovered her face and looked up into his angry gaze. “Your honour…”

“My honour be damned, I have shit for honour. What about _me_ Brienne?” His voice was raw.

Brienne felt her mouth drop slightly open as she watched him turn to pace to and fro.

“I thought… Jaime, you don’t need me for _anything_ anymore. You’ve redeemed yourself, your honour… your own way. The men in the camp follow _you_ , not just because you are a Lannister, not because you are Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, but because _you are you_.”

Brienne stood slowly, for once her stumbling tongue not stuck to her big teeth. Maybe it was the fatigue that laced every muscle of her body, maybe it was the simple fact that Jaime didn’t face her as he spoke, his voice raw, having turned to look down into the fire. She was glad, that for once, the words in her head were matched by the words coming out of her mouth.

“You don’t need me Ser Jaime Lannister, because you have the heart of every one of the men that follow you. You have kept the oath you made to Lady Catelyn by not raising arms against her kin. You have already found your _own_ honour, and if anyone can find Sansa Stark and get her to a place of safety it will be you. Not me.” Brienne gazed at his profile, the fall of pale hair that had grown long enough to brush his shoulders once more tucked behind one ear, her heart breaking. “You don’t need me.”

Then she got it, the seething, sidelong glance. The emerald edged scythe of a look that cut her breath clean from her chest.

Just like that, her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth again.

“Of course I bloody need you.” He snarled, “why do you think I keep standing between the world and you, if not because I need _you_?”

He turned and prowled across the room towards her, terrifying, all Lannister Lion and clear intent.

Brienne was off, away from the stool, and backing up in the face of his relentless approach, clumsily stumbling over a chair and almost tripping over a sleeping Thoros of Myr.

“But you have the Kingsguard, Cersei… the King!” She argued as she fell back against the panelled wall of what obviously passed as the innkeeper’s best room. “Your life is full of people that are yours to return to, Jaime. I have lied to you, put you in danger, you don’t want me… you can’t want me.”

The back of Brienne's head hit the wall with a dull thud, “I haven’t even got a home anymore. Not now that Tarth has gone.”

Jaime stopped dead in front of her, toe to toe, staring directly into her eyes, his jade green gaze bright, reflecting the flickering firelight in their depths. With a deft flick of the fingers on his left hand he undid the clasp on her cloak and it fell to the floor.

“You have me.”

Brienne could not stop the pathetic half choked laugh that came from her dry throat, “You? I’ve never truly had you Jaime.”

“No?” Jaime put his left hand on the wall, trapping her, “No… you haven’t, have you? And maybe that is part of the problem.”

“I didn’t mean…” she would have rolled her eyes in exasperation but he was so close Brienne could not look away.

It did not seem possible, but he advanced until there was no space between their bodies at all.

“What are you running away from, Brienne?” he asked her softly, “It cannot be away from being heir of Tarth because that is now in the hands of others, your father missing. You have never run away from a fight in your life, you fought me; you fought and beat any number of men when you followed Renly. So why are you running away to the north? Is it to find another cause to follow?” Jaime moved so close to her face that she could feel his breath on her lips, “or are you simply running away from me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snorted desperately, her attempt to look away foiled by his hand seizing her chin and gently making her face him. “I’m not scared of you.” Jaime's green gaze flicked over her face, and suddenly Brienne realised just how much she must give away without even saying a word as his expression subtly changed.

“Oh, so if it’s not me, then maybe it is this,” Jaime kissed her, his lips dry and warm. They tasted slightly of wine and the moment they touched hers Brienne realised she was lost. Her desperate efforts to maintain her composure withered away in the face of Jaime Lannister’s experimental kisses. He kissed her full on the mouth, his tongue swirling over her plump lips, his teeth catching at the skin there quite deliberately.

Then he stopped, and studied her.

Brienne’s face flushed bright red, a blush so fierce she could feel her skin burning under his curious gaze. With deep breaths, she stared back at him, relieved beyond belief when she finally felt her skin almost return to normal, she licked her lips, tasting the wine flavoured kiss he had left behind. “We had an arrangement that’s all,” she smiled a wobbly, but she hoped fairly confident, smile at him. “I’m not scared.”

“Shame,” Jaime suddenly grinned at her, “because I am… enough for both of us.” His thumb traced the corner of her mouth before he leant in for another kiss, and another, and then another as his right arm moved round her waist to move her closer still. “But as for the arrangement, it stops now.”

“Oh,” Brienne stood up straight, regaining her slight height advantage over Jaime as she did so, “I see. Of course, I understand – it always was a stupid idea… I shouldn’t have ever …” It had been wonderful, but she always knew it had to end. Once Jaime really understood that he really didn’t need her anymore, he would leave. The prospect of the north and a battle was not the lure Jaime thought it was for her, it was the safety. Safety from a half-life of being Ser Jaime Lannister’s shadow, safety from the pain of being with him each day and not being able to say how she felt.

 _It is a good thing that the arrangement is at an end, finally,_ she told herself.

He was regarded her with a curious expression on his face, head tilted to one side, green eyes studying her closely as she stared stoically back at him.

“Upstairs,” he said simply, “now, if you are agreeable.”

Brienne could only frown at him.

“But the arrangement…”

“We have no need of such nonsense, we never did, and we certainly have no need of it from now on.”

 “Why do you say that?” She asked faintly.

“Because I have every intention of taking you to my bed and fucking you properly,” he replied pleasantly, “if you would like me to.” Brienne blinked once, twice, even as he carried on to say, “And I have no intention of going any further with this conversation while Thoros is snoring under the table in the same room.”

“Oh,” Brienne replied weakly, watching as Jaime stepped back from her and walked to the door, calling for his attendants as he did so

 

 

“Are you going to kiss me?” Jaime closed the door to his room and leaned back against the wood. The candle held in Brienne’s hand flickered slightly from the displaced air as she placed it carefully on the mantelpiece above the fire having followed him nervously up the stairs. Jaime was already undoing the lacing on his gambeson as he watched her slow to a halt in the middle of the room and turn round. Brienne studied him as he watched her, a wicked, golden temptation lit by the fire and candlelight. What made her hesitate was the painful knowledge that to be with him again and then face another parting would break what was left of her poor battered heart.

“This is not a good idea, Jaime.”

His laugh was surprisingly hesitant, “Gods Brienne, why not?”

“Because it’s not me that you want, it’s the challenge that excites you.” She sighed, “You like to win.”

“I love you.” He told her in a soft voice.

_How wrong could I have been, thinking I could stop myself from being hurt, when all it actually takes to break my heart wide open is Jaime saying…?_

“And, I think you love me.”

Brienne stared at him, feeling like he’d managed to disarm her in the middle of a fight.

“How much wine have you drunk this evening, Jaime?” She asked him, “Because you really are not making a lot of sense.”

“No, not being with you has robbed me of what little sense I may have had.” Jaime didn’t move from the door. This was when she should be strong and sensible. This was when she should tell him that they should resist this attraction, that he was Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and that she had promise to fulfil, a thrice sworn vow to see through to the end. But she was tired. Tired of pretending, tired of being strong, and soon enough she would have to find the strength to walk away, but tonight faced with the temptation of the very person she had fought so hard to banish from her mind since she had left the Lannister camp, she crumbled and replied, “Jaime, why do you even trouble yourself with me?”

Jaime reached back to lock the door, “do you really have so little idea of how much I want you?”

Brienne stared at the floor rather than look at him, “I know I am no beauty. You do not have to flatter me – it is more than enough that you want to lie with me.”

He pushed himself away from the door and walked towards her, “You are more than beautiful Brienne, exceptional, unique… extraordinary.” He shrugged his gambeson from his body and started unlacing his shirt, “You are without equal,” he said as he dropped his breeches and pulled his shirt rather awkwardly over his head with his one hand, “and my life is not complete without you. Now Brienne, please at least remove your sword belt, as I am about to come over there and kiss you senseless.”

Brienne took a deep breath and unbuckled her sword belt, bending to carefully place her weapon on the floor, her hands then going to unlace the ties on her padded gambeson at her throat as her eyes followed the tousled green eyed lion prowling the room.

“Damn,” she cursed as she only pulled them into knots with her distracted efforts.

“Let me help you with those,” Jaime watched her struggle to release the ties for a few moments before saying, “come here wench.” He pulled her impatiently towards him, and nimbly unpicked the tangled threads faster with one hand than she had managed with two as she watched him. Her face turning bright red once more as he deftly stripped her of her jacket.

“Not wench...,” she protested, but Jaime was already walking her backwards towards the bed even as he pulled her shirt over her head.

“Brienne,” he told her, kissing her lips, neck, along her collarbone and onto her freckled shoulder, at which point she toppled backwards onto the mattress, Jaime with her. He landed with a shock of blond hair falling over his face making him appear every inch the lion he was supposed to be as he landed on top of her. “Ooops,” he grinned wickedly as he looked down at her and started fumbling with the fastening of her breeches, “No second thoughts I hope?” She didn’t seem to have the words to answer him as they were stuck in her throat, so Brienne shook her head and helped him undo the ties to the last of her clothing instead.

 _Being with Jaime really is like looking at the sun, he burns so brightly, I'm blinded by him,_ was all she could think as she stared up at him as if hypnotised.

 “Gods, Brienne,” he kissed her again, “when you look at me like that…” his left hand moved to touch her between the legs, and all she could do was writhe and buck against him as he continued to kiss and caress her.

“Oh,” she said, “Oh.” She struggled to find words but was lost when she tried to say anything, able only to give the occasional gasp or whimper.

“Brienne,” Jaime whispered in her ear, his voice soft as she felt him nudging her thighs apart. She opened to him, and tried to breathe as he pushed into her. Slow, gentle, his weight on her was not exactly uncomfortable just awkward. She shifted, flexing her back instinctively trying to ease his gentle pressure against her pelvis and heard him groan against her neck as his cock slid against her. Moving gently on into her, he stretched and filled Brienne, her body arched against him, embracing the discomfort she felt briefly, much as she did the knocks and thumps she experienced when sparring with Jaime in the lists. What was different was the exhilaration as Jaime pushed into her again and again, kissing her on the mouth as he did so, his body arching over hers, muscled, tense, every sinew rigid as he moved himself above her.

Brienne urged him closer, using her arms to pull him to her chest and satisfying herself further by folding her thighs around his hips and pulling him into her as far as he would go. All her previous awkwardness fled, as her body and Jaime's seemed to now fit perfectly together, moving with a rhythm that became as natural as breathing as they continued. Every stroke, every caress driving her forward into a state of trembling anticipation. Finally her climax broke, the release that swept through her as he continued to thrust made her cry out, a broken keening sound only drowned out by Jaime roaring her name as he plunged into her for the final time as he came.

_Ye gods! Hear Me Roar!_

 

 

Brienne watched him sleeping in the firelight, chewing on her lips, aware that their relationship had changed forever but reluctant to dwell on what that might mean for them both.

“I am awake you know,” he told her, his eyes still closed, “I can feel you watching me.”

“Oh,” Brienne propped her chin on her hand.

“So, are you not going to ask me what happens next, wench?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“I thought I’d come with you to the north and to the wall,” His green eyes opened, their emerald depths fathomless as he regarded her, “to see if Thoros might be right after all. Who knows, and I can’t have Stannis Baratheon stealing a march on the Lannister family now, can I?”

“No, of course not,” Brienne rolled her eyes at Jaime, the need to sleep making it more and more difficult to keep her eyes open, she managed to mutter," but I still have vowed to kill him."

“I respect that,” Jaime responded, closing his eyes once more, he tucked her into his side with his right arm and whispered in her ear, " but if maybe you could indulge me a little, and not do it straight away, that would be most helpful." 

"Well...maybe," Brienne murmured.

"Excellent," Jaime replied. "I am indebted to you... and you know what they say about a Lannister and his debts..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's my eleven chapters done then and I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.  
> I hope you like the double length last chapter... I thought I was going to still be typing come the new year!!  
> Looking forward to my JBHoliday now....


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